


Grow as we go

by Quiet_Constellation



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: AU: some of the parents don't suck, Angst with a Happy Ending, Archie is an actual sweetheart, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Future Fic, Gen, I refuse to send Archie to the Navy, Multi, Mutual Pining, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Slow Burn, So get on board with Camp Counselor!Archie, Time Skips, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-11
Updated: 2020-05-22
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:13:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 20,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24124951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quiet_Constellation/pseuds/Quiet_Constellation
Summary: It’s one thing to feel like you’re drowning in your own life, aimless, not knowing what the future holds. Not knowing where you stand. It’s another to know exactly what you want, and realizing you can’t have it.-----Post 4x18, future fic! Archie and Betty grow apart after graduation and reconnect further down the line. Slow burn, childhood friends to lovers, intense pining, let's go barchies let's go!
Relationships: Archie Andrews/Betty Cooper, Betty Cooper & Jughead Jones, Betty Cooper & Veronica Lodge
Comments: 38
Kudos: 147





	1. Unraveled

**Author's Note:**

> So it's looking like I've fully lost my mind over this ship, and I've had a lot of time to think about what could happen once these kids actually head out to college. Hopefully, you'll have some fun reading this!

There’s a pounding in his chest, like the tick of a clock.    
A constant nagging sound, _ tick tick _ ticking away. 

He looks around.

On his bed, there’s a tux, and on his desk, a letter from the Naval Academy. His walls are covered with posters of bands he no longer listens to, and pictures of friends he’s not sure he’ll be able to keep.

None of it feels right. 

He’d promised his dad he’d always at least  _ try _ and do the right thing.

And it’s the right thing to accompany Veronica to prom, just like it’s the right thing to go along with his mother’s plans for his future. 

As he looks outside his window, the pounding in his heart resumes.

It’s the right thing to do to let her have her happy ending. 

When he looks in the mirror, he barely recognizes himself. The suit — _ Fred’s _ fits him perfectly, but the bowtie feels wrong, constricting.  _ Suffocating. _

When did he start drifting like this? Was it before, or after Veronica moved to Riverdale? Before or after he broke Betty’s heart in her driveway? 

His mom gives him an approving smile, brushing the hair away from his face. 

“There, all fixed!”

She sounds sad. Not broken, but like the pain has taken root inside of her, and she’s letting it grow.  _ “You have your father’s smile,” _ she’d once told him. Maybe that’s why she’d been so eager to send him away. The last reminder of Fred, out of the house, far, far away from her grieving mind.

He smiles at her, and she beams.

“I’m so proud of you, honey.”    
“I’m proud of you too, Mom,” he says, because it’s what she needs to hear. 

She hugs him tight, her eyes full of tears and her smile wavering.

When he steps outside the porch, he averts his gaze from the Cooper household. Betty’s already out front, light blue fabric twirling around her, smiling at the guy standing next to her. 

“Archie!’ She shouts, and his heart skips a beat. 

It’s one thing to feel like you’re drowning in your own life, aimless, not knowing what the future holds. Not knowing where you stand. It’s another to know exactly what you want, and realizing you can’t have it. 

And it’s not like things have changed. He’s still not good enough for her. Betty’s going to Yale, she’s bound to do great things. Jug, even held back by his run with the preppies, will soon follow suit.   
As he looks at them, standing together, perfectly matched, he sees it. They fit together in a way Betty and him don’t, and the beat in his heart is starting to sound suspiciously like envy. 

“What do you think?” Betty says, all bright smiles, her long blonde hair dancing around her face.

_ You’re beautiful _ , he wants to say.

Instead, he catches the keys Jughead tosses to him, and grins in what he hopes is a convincing way. 

“You guys look great!” 

He’s only looking at her. Hungry, hurt. Enamored.

There’s a fleeting moment, half a second, really, where his eyes flutter to her lips, before he turns his head away. It’s enough for Jughead to notice, and the boy frowns before following Betty into the car. 

_ Good job, Archie. _

The rest of the ride is quiet, and Archie makes a point to stare straight ahead as he drives. 

Soon the lines of the Pembroke appear, and he takes a deep breath.    
Deep in his subconscious, his dad’s voice chimes in. 

_ Keep a cool head, but bring your full heart. _

The door opens before him, and he lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. Veronica looks nothing short of spectacular. The long black gown embraces her figure nicely, pearls sewn into the garment, and she holds out her hand with a nervous smile.

“Do you like it?” she asks, almost sheepishly.    
“It’s perfect,” he replies, and places the corsage on her wrist. 

Riverdale High’s very own prom is exactly what he expects it to be. Balloons are strung together, taped to the walls, and the gym still smells faintly of paint, but it doesn’t matter. The air is buzzing with electricity, and for the first time in a while, he actually feels  _ happy _ . 

They pose together, Veronica pulling off her brightest smile, Kevin grimacing in the back, and he grins.

It’s the first time he’s felt like a teenager in ages, and he lets himself enjoy it. The smell of punch alone is enough to make his head dizzy, and soon he finds himself gently swaying on the dancefloor, holding Veronica against him.

It’s not fair to her, this little crush of his. He knows this. And the last thing he wants to do is to hurt her. She’s dealing with enough as it is, and he doesn’t want to worry her.   
It will pass. It always does.

A nagging voice in his head counters that it also always comes back.

As Veronica’s head rests on his shoulder, he closes his eyes. She smells of honey and smoke, probably due to her run to the Maple farm, earlier. It’s a little bittersweet, and it suits her.

“Is everything the way you’d hoped it would be?” he asks, swaying in place.   
“I’ll admit the bulldog cupcakes are a bit of a letdown, but Reggie’s punch sure makes up for them,” she grins.

She sounds so happy. 

“Hey,” he says, lifting up her chin. “I love you.”   
“I love you too, Archie Andrews,” she replies, and he wonders if she feels it, the shift in their tone. Like they’re using past tense.

They spend the rest of the night huddled together, sharing drinks and laughs with the rest of the gang, screaming every word to every song at the top of their lungs. He’s not sure how, but after a while, things start to blur together, and by the time he emerges from his pina colada-flavored slumber Veronica, Toni, and Cheryl seem to have launched themselves into some kind of dance battle. He laughs, grabbing a cup of water before stepping outside for a breath of fresh air.

His head is starting to hurt, and he takes a deep breath, sitting on the concrete steps of Riverdale High for what he hopes is the last time.

Betty’s voice rings behind him.

“Penny for your thoughts?” 

He turns to her, resisting the urge to rub his eyes, because he’s almost sure he’s seeing double. Two Bettys stand before him; one is wearing a pink dress, and a teary-eyed look, while the other sports a light blue gown, and a small smile. Both are staring at him with the same fond look in their eye, and it’s almost too much for him to bear. 

“I was thinking that I must be way more drunk than I thought I was,” he smiles, and she smiles back.   
“Reggie’s not playing this year, huh.”

He grins, she chuckles softly, and just like that, they fall into a comfortable silence. It’s the kind of peace and quiet he’s only ever been able to find with her, and it’s  _ nice _ . 

Maybe she’s right. Maybe that’s what they are to each other. A safe place, a home to return to.    
He clears his throat.

“Doesn’t this remind you of...”   
“Our eighth-grade dance?” she grins.   
“Yes! Why am I thinking about it now?”   
“Must be the sweaty sock smell, because it’s  _ definitely _ bringing back some memories for me,” she grins. 

This is his favorite Betty. Open, smiling, with her cheeks flushed and her blonde hair tucked behind her ears. A gesture she recreates for him, now, and it kills him that he can’t push it back himself, the way he used to.

“Do you remember?” she says, so low it’s almost a whisper.   
“What?”   
“Our first dance.” 

He sighs.

“How could I forget? You stepped on my feet the entire time!”   
“I did not! How dare you slander my name like this, Archie Andrews!”

He winces, and she shoves him to the side. 

“I miss us,” she confesses after a while, and he takes a deep breath.

“I do, too,” he says. 

She looks straight ahead of her, eyes set on the football field, and he stares at her, waiting for her to say something, anything that will keep him from opening his big mouth and ruin the moment.

She holds out a hand to him, and he frowns.

“Care to set the record straight, Andrews? One last dance, for old time’s sake?”

She waits, patiently, with her hand open. He caves in.

It’s hard not to remember the last time they danced like this. And maybe it’s the punch, or the soft tune they can hear through the windows, but he catches himself wishing they could go back to it. Wishing he’d given her a different answer.

Careful not to stand too close, he lets their fingers intertwine. 

“You were the first girl I ever danced with, you know that?” he whispers, letting the words get lost into her hair.   
“You were my first, too.”

Her voice feels small, and it takes everything in him not lift her chin up, and look into her wide eyes for any trace of hope. His heart feels like it’s about to explode. Was this always here? Had he been stupid enough to ignore it this whole time?

“Archie?”   
“Yeah?”

She places her head against his chest.

“Don’t go to the Naval Academy.”

“Why?”   
“Because it’s not the right thing to do,” she answers, and he frowns.   
“How would you know?”   
“Because I know you,” she says, her lips pressed into a small smile, “and you’d miss it too much. Riverdale is your home.”

_ But it won’t be hers, soon. _

“I don’t know if I’m strong enough to stay,” he finally admits, and she sighs into him, letting their foreheads touch.    
“You’re the strongest person I know, Arch. You’ve taken care of the town long enough, don’t you want to let it take care of you?”

He closes his eyes.   
God, he’s tired. Tired of fighting everyone else’s battles on top of his own. Of wanting things he can’t have. Of never being good enough for anyone, especially not for her.

They stay like this, in a quiet embrace for what may as well be hours. In reality, the song ends, and Betty steps away with a strange smile on her face.

“My first, and my very last school dance with Archie Andrews. Lucky me!”   
“Oh, I’m the lucky one,” he replies, and she laughs.   
“That you are.”

She disappears into the gym, her dress shimmering under the night lights, and suddenly he  _ understands _ .

There’s a difference between loving someone, and being in love.  
  


* * *

  
She takes her heels off, the skin of her feet crying from the fire she’s put them under all night. 

Betty sighs in relief.

“You okay?” Jug says, his nose already burrowed in the new book he’s writing. 

They’re sitting on her bed, formal clothes half undone, and  _ wow _ , she can finally breathe.

“Yeah, I’m just happy this is over,” she leans in, carefully reading over his shoulder. “ Is that weird?”   
“Well I’ve never been one for school paraphernalia, so I certainly get the sentiment.”   
  
_ It’s more than that, _ she wants to say. She’s spent the last four years battling  _ literal _ and inner demons, all the while maintaining a 4.0 GPA. She’s exhausted and more than happy to leave Riverdale and its craziness behind.   
The loose ends, however, bother her more than she thought they would.

She’s never liked change, she muses, pulling her hair back into a ponytail. She’d liked her life to have order, to make sense. To have known variables she could count on, like the boy in the window waving her good morning and good night for the past ten years, or Jug’s delighted smile after biting into one of Pop’s burgers. 

Her moving away to Connecticut, and him to Ohio? Not a change she’s particularly fond of.

Of course, she’s supportive of his dream, and him of hers, but she doesn’t know how they’ll survive the distance. She trusts them to try, at least. 

“I saw you follow Archie outside earlier, was he okay?” Jughead says, and her heart skips a beat.   
“Oh, he just needed some air,” she replies.

There’s no point mentioning the dance to him. Not if she doesn’t want him to get the wrong idea, anyway.

“I can’t believe he’s going to enroll in the Navy,” Jug says, shaking his head disapprovingly.

She clears her throat.

“I told him not to go, actually.”

He frowns.

“Oh. Why?”   
“What do you mean, why? It’s  _ Archie _ . Don’t you think he deserves a break?”   
  


He looks at her then, his eyes squinting at her, trying to figure out something.

“I don’t see you taking a break, or any of us for that matter.”   
“He went to jail—”   
“Juvie—”   
“He was on the run from his  _ girlfriend’s mobster dad _ —"

“So was I!”

He sighs.

“Why are you always coddling him? He’s Archie Andrews, Riverdale’s golden boy. Hell, if Cheryl hadn’t threatened every single voter tonight, he would have won prom king,” he adds, a little bitter for her taste.

“I’m not coddling him! I just worry about him.”   
“Don’t you think that’s Veronica’s job? Or would you like that one too?”

The unexpected venom surprises them both, and she stares at him with wide eyes.

“What is  _ that  _ supposed to mean?”

He takes a deep, tired breath.

“I’m sorry. I thought I saw something earlier… I’m being stupid,” he concedes.

Images of a garage, of dark, hungry eyes start flowing back to her, and she brushes them away. 

She should tell him. In fact, she should have told him weeks ago. That his suspicions were right, that she’d felt lost, and afraid. He would have understood.

But she’s scared of change, and even more so of hurting him. She’s scared of the pain she would see in his eyes, and the I-told-you-so’s that would follow. So instead, she says:

“It’s okay. I guess I am a little protective of him. I’ve just known him all my life, and it’s just… hard to say goodbye to an old friend, I guess? It’s like the official end of our childhood, you know.”

He smiles, bringing her closer for a hug.

“Yeah, you’re right. Come here,” he says, kissing her cheek.

She had made up her mind. Picked the boy who had remained by her side, time and time again. The one who only ever picked her.

“Should I turn the lights off?” Jug’ suddenly says, and she looks up, out to the neighboring window. 

The blinds are closed, a faint glow showing through the curtains.   
She takes a deep breath.

“Yeah, I think I’ve had enough high school experiences to last me a lifetime.”

* * *

“Come on, Archiekins! Just one more song!” Veronica begs, her legs stretching out of the bed.   
“Another one? ” he chuckles, and she gently pushes his knee with her foot.

“I just want to be serenaded by my beau before I storm off to Barnard, is that so wrong?” she grins.

“I don’t have anything else,” he says sheepishly. “Besides, don’t you want me to join you?” he motions towards the bed.   
“All in due time, Archie Andrews. All in due time.”

Her eyes scan the room, trying to find something, anything that will stop them from ending this night too early. It’s childish of her, but she wants the memory to last. 

“Look at this! You didn’t sing this one!” she exclaims, grabbing the music sheet excitedly.

He frowns.

“Not this one, I’m still working on it.”

She pouts.

“Please?”

When he doesn’t move, she scrunches up her nose.

“Pretty please?”

He sighs.

“Fiiiiine.”

She squeals in delight, clapping her hands like a child as he sits back on his chair and clears his throat.

The first few words are hesitant and raspy. It’s a love ballad, and a pretty good one at that.   
She looks at him, at the infectious grin he sports when singing, and something gives in her heart. 

She’s going to miss him so badly.

Realistically, she knows what’s bound to happen. She’ll move to New York, make new friends, and they’ll try to make it work for a while. Phonecalls, pricy plane tickets he’ll feel too embarrassed to accept, and soon, the absolute adoration she feels embedded in her chest will morph into nostalgia. 

She’s not strong enough to end it now. It’s selfish, it is, but she needs him by her side, at least until this part of the ride is over.    
People tend to think of her as this queen of ice, reigning upon la Bonne Nuit alone, never lonely. And yet, in the dark of night, as she listens for signs of her father tripping down the stairs, she’s thankful Archie’s hand is here for her to take hold of.

Oh, this boy, how much she’s loved him.

She listens to the lyrics, trying to distract herself from the knot forming in her throat. They’re sweet, and simple, but there is an air of truth to them. They’re unquestionably  _ Him _ .   
She closes her eyes, smiling.

_ 'Cause you make me wanna be _ _  
_ _ Stronger than I am _ _  
_ _ Maybe I'm reaching, misplacing a feeling _ _  
_ _ There's no way to know but to try  _

She frowns.

_ So give me tonight _ _  
_ _ I don't know much _ _  
_ _ But I know this feels right _

There’s a twist in her stomach, an uneasy feeling she’s trying to shake, and she shakes her head slightly.

_ So give me tonight _ _  
_ _ If you carry the torch _ _  
_ _ I'd follow the light _ _  
_ _ I'd follow the light  _

She looks at him, not meeting her eye, and suddenly it dawns on her: this is a song he wrote for someone else, someone who isn’t her. 

“Archie,” she starts, and he stops playing.   
“I’m sorry, I’m still working on it,” he replies, but his eyes betray him.

He really is the worst liar in all of Riverdale.

“You didn’t write this for me, did you.”

It’s a statement, not a question. therefore, he answers it as such.

“...No.”

She tries to not let it get to her. To ignore the knife gently pushing into her ribcage, and instead examine the situation the only way she knows how: In a cold, detached manner. As if this weren’t her heart on the plate, but someone else’s, up for dissection. 

“What happened?” She asks.   
“Someone opened a door I thought was closed.”

He looks torn, and it’s a pity they’ve never taken that trip to Paris, because he bears a striking resemblance to a Rodin sculpture. 

She doesn’t ask who the girl is. She  _ knows _ , deep down. There’s only one girl that would make it that difficult for him. 

“Are you in love with her?” Veronica asks, even when she knows the answer will likely be her  _ coup de grâce.  _ _  
_ “I love  _ you _ ,” he replies, his voice cracking.

_ God, his face _ . It’s like she’s the one breaking his heart.   
  
“That’s not what I asked, Archiekins,” she says softly as she presses the palms of her hands to her eyes.

Tears are rolling down her cheeks as he barely ushers out a reply.

“Yes.”

She’s tugging at her pearls, she realizes, a habit she’d formed when faced with a difficult situation. She should be mad. She should yell at him, but she’s almost surprised to find herself numb to her own pain.

“All this time, it was right in front of me. I should have known.”   
“I’m so sorry,” he says, and she hates that he genuinely sounds heartbroken.

“Listen. I don’t want to fight right now,” she starts, “I just want my boyfriend.”

_ Don’t leave me just yet, _ she begs.

“I’m sorry,” he says, again.   
“I’m sorry, too,” she replies.

She looks outside the window, to the girl next door’s. 

It stings a bit, to know she’s lost to someone who wasn’t even trying to win. She’s a proud girl, a proud woman, even. And even if she’d made up her mind about the way things were supposed to die down between them, it still hurts to see him move on.

“For what it’s worth, I really did love you,” he simply says, his arms wrapping up around her.

“I know,” she whispers back, hiding her face into the crook of his neck.

She takes it all in one last time.    
Archie’s boyish bedroom, the scattered pictures of his dog, the team, half-written songs poking out of the ground. On his desk, a mostly filled out application for the Naval Academy lies next to a picture of her. 

As she closes her eyes, she lets herself remember it all. The pain, the happiness, and above all, the end of her first love.

One day, soon, he’ll be someone else’s.   
But tonight, he’s still hers.

* * *

As he pulls on the paper straw, Jughead Jones III feels his eyes roll into the back of his head. He’s not going to complain, not today, not when it’s their last time all hanging out together.

He takes another sip, and the distinct taste of cardboard coats the roof of his mouth. 

Nope, this has to be publicly shared.

“I love saving the environment as much as the next guy, but those straws really ruin the flavor,” he pouts, pushing the shake away from him.

It’s just the three of them, today, sitting in their booth at Pop’s. And without Veronica to latch on to his bait, his quip about the impending doom of his taste buds falls flat. 

Betty smirks, pushing one of her fries into his drink.

“ _ Now _ it’s ruined.”

He picks it out, licking his fingers as he eats it, much to the horror of his girlfriend.

“Joke’s on you, Betty Cooper, for not seeing the true genius behind mixing up fast food staples!”

Archie laughs, and she scrunches up her nose. 

Moments like this are getting rare these days, so he pauses, trying to fully capture the essence of it, if not for him, for his next novel. Soon he’ll embark on a journey, with a different setting and a new set of characters, as he’ll no doubt go back to being the man on the outside looking in.   
Ohio seems far, both in time and in distance, and as he looks to his left, he wonders what will happen to them.

He doesn’t want to presume the worst, not this time, but it’s hard to stay hopeful when neither he nor Betty have unlimited funds at their disposal. They’ve promised each other to always make space for one another, and for once in his life, he’s thankful for cellphones and the internet. Hearing her voice and seeing her face will definitely keep him sane enough to endure two years in the middle of nowhere, USA.

“So, when are two you leaving?” Archie asks, pushing a fry around on his plate.   
“I’m packing up this afternoon,” Betty replies with a small smile, “and my train leaves tonight. Jug’s driving me to the station.”

She squeezes his arm, and he gives her a sour smile.

“I’m flying out at the end of the week, so… this might be our last hang,” he says. “When are you going to hear back from the Navy?”

Archie shuffles around awkwardly.

“I… Actually I haven’t sent out the application yet.”   
“Oh,  _ good _ ,” she nods, a slight smile on her face.

_ Good? _

He frowns. 

“Does anyone have news from V?” she asks, pulling out her phone. “She hasn’t gotten back to me since she left.”

Had she looked up from her screen, she would have seen it, the discomfort on Archie’s face.

“I know she had a lot of catching up to do,” he says evasively.

_ Huh. _ _  
_   
“I guess you’re right. She must be busy with her new life,” Betty replies. “Oh, well! She’ll get back to us when she has time, she always does.”

She stands up, ready to go settle the bill, and he waits until she’s out of earshot to ask Archie:

“So...When did you two break up?”

His friend stares at him, half-surprised, half-relieved, then mutters.

“A week ago. Right before she left for New York.”   
“I’m sorry, man.”   
“It’s okay. It’s easier that way,” he says, gazing at the counter where Betty’s paying.

Something twists in him. Call it a hunch, or built-in paranoia.

“Don’t tell her.”

Archie’s brow furrow.

“What?”   
“I’m asking you, as a favor. Don’t tell Betty before she leaves,” he says.

His own words taste worse than the straw he was nibbling on earlier, and he hates himself for even asking.

He’s asked Betty countless times, watched her carefully for any signs of lies or pretenses. The answer has always been the same.  _ No,  _ she doesn’t like Archie like that.

_ Anymore. _

It’s what’s unsaid that drives him crazy. It’s the absolute certainty that comes the day Archie Andrews calls for her, she’ll come running.

“Why?”

He gives him  _ the look.  _ The one that says:  _ come on, Andrews. Look at yourself. Look at me. Like there’s a fighting chance. _

“Please.”

It’s what it’s come to. Begging his best friend to prove him wrong, to say he’s got no money in the game. 

“Okay,” he finally says, and Jughead’s shoulders drop in relief.

Archie stares at him, like he wants to say something, and Betty drops back down in her seat.

“Woah, why the long faces?”

Archie shrugs.

“Just… thinking about the future.”

She tilts her head, smirking at him like a cat, and Jughead closes his eyes. 

Someday, he hopes, he’ll be able to rest.   
  


* * *

She spends her entire afternoon reassuring her mother that no, she doesn’t need a second comforter, and yes, she’s packed all of her winter clothes. 

It’s overwhelming, seeing her whole life fitting neatly in two suitcases, and with a guilty frown, she wonders how much of it will end up replaced by new memories. 

So far she’s packed exactly two pieces of her childhood: her diary, because she doesn’t trust her mother not to read it or analyze it for her pseudo-psychology column at work, and…

_ “Swiss Family Robinson?” _ _  
_ _ “Yeah, it’s this old read-along record we used to listen to when we were like, five,” Betty beams. “Oh my god, I love it Arch! Thank you!” _

She tucks the record in the case between two powder pink sweaters. It’s a piece of Archie that feels safe taking with her, safer than a kiss or a dance for sure. 

In truth, she doesn’t really know where she stands with him, and she’s not sure she ever will. He’s been different lately, distant. Preoccupied. And she knows she shouldn’t think about it too much, that it’s part of life, and that they’re growing apart for a reason. 

But it’s weird, putting pictures of the boy who was once her moon and stars back in a box. To physically move on.

Her phone buzzes in her pocket, and she frowns, looking at the text. 

_ Driveway, 5 min? _

She considers ignoring it. Something in her gut tells her this is a bad idea.   
She looks at the corkboard, with half its pictures taken down.

_ Saying goodbye is part of life, _ Polly had once said.   
This one is long overdue.

Sure enough, when she steps outside, Archie’s here, leaning against her mother’s car. She stares at him, with his tousled red hair and freckled face. If this were their story, this is how he’d appear to her. No different than he’s ever looked, yet a dashing, lonesome prince.

“Are you all packed up?” he asks, and she shakes her head.   
“Pretty much. Jug’s going to drive me to the station in an hour, and I’ll take the train from there. Lots of time to sort myself out,” she adds, tugging on her sweater’s sleeves.   
“Sounds like a plan,” he says, and she shrugs.

They pause, awkwardly standing four feet apart from each other, and she wonders if that’s all he wanted to say.

“It wasn’t about feeling safe, for me,” he blurts out. “I just wanted you to know that.”

She looks at him, tall, handsome, kind Archie Andrews; The boy she’d pined after for ten years. Her first love, and first heartbreak. 

“I—,” she starts.

“I, uh, wanted you to have this.”

He holds out an envelope, careful not to stand too close. When she grabs it, he pushes his fists back in his pockets, his eyes everywhere but on her.

“I was never any good with words, so I figured...” 

“Archie…” she starts.   
“I’m not asking anything of you. I’m just… moving on. In my own way,” he finishes, taking a step closer to her.

Her limbs feel like stone.

So this is really it. 

When he puts his arms around her, she lets out a sob.

It’s upsetting, the way the crook of her neck fits perfectly against his, how his fingers toy with the loose hair in her ponytail, like muscle memory. And it may as well be; they’ve done this hundreds of times. Before each family vacation, every Chicago trip, every hello and goodbye. This one, however, feels different.

They’re saying goodbye to a hundred different things at once. To versions of themselves they no longer are. To the girl next door and the boy with the crooked smile. To the partners in crime, occasional hand-holders, and listeners of records. 

She breathes in, almost expecting him to smell differently. But he just smells like  _ Archie. _ Like freshly mown grass, an afternoon in the sun.

Like  _ her _ .

“I’m really going to miss you,” she says, and she lets herself think it, just once.

She feels a whisper of a kiss against her hair, and she closes her eyes.   
“I’m really going to miss you too.”

She takes a deep breath.

“Goodbye, Archie Andrews.”

When he opens his mouth, letting go of their embrace, his voice feels raw.

“Goodbye, Betty Cooper.”

* * *

“You’re pretty quiet, this morning,” Mary remarks, looking at him over her laptop.   
“Yeah, rough night,” he blurts out, hiding the rest of his face in his coffee mug.

  
It’s been a week of this. Of him barely saying a word, going from the dinner table to his bedroom, a never-ending loop of teenage sulking.

She wonders if she should be worried. If his friends’ departure is taking a larger toll on him than she’d anticipated.

“Archie. Look at me.”

He lifts his head up, suddenly she feels like he’s ten again, and she’s just caught him trying to sneak out of his bedroom to see if Santa was real. 

“What’s up with you, lately?” 

She looks at him, and Fred’s eyes look back at her. It’s always a little disconcerting, seeing a mix of yourself and someone else, forming this entirely different person, and it’s not getting any easier with time.

He opens his mouth, and she can tell, immediately, that he’s about to lie. So she cuts him off.

“It’s okay if you don’t want to tell me. I just worry about you. There are some pretty big changes coming into your life soon… And I want you to know I’m there. For anything.”

He nods, going back to his coffee, and she stands up, ready to leave him the space he obviously needs to process whatever’s happening to him.

“I said goodbye to Betty yesterday,” he says, and she turns back to him.

Oh, so  _ that’s _ what it is.

She doesn’t comment on it. That’s not what mothers do. Instead, she lets her hand hang on the table, close to his, if he wants to take it. 

He does. All of a sudden, she finds her son’s head on her shoulder, and her fingers gently stroking the hair on his head.    
It’s disorienting, how loud his pain is when he’s barely saying anything.

“You’re going to be fine, Arch’. You’ve been through way worse, and you’ve always managed to stand up, haven’t you?”   
He takes a sharp breath, and his voice is so small, it takes everything in her not to shatter when he answers:

“I just don’t know what to do anymore. Everything feels  _ wrong _ .”

She should have seen it coming. And she would have, had she not been busy with the bills, the laundry, and the lingering presence of Fred, haunting her everywhere she looked.

She holds him close, the way she used to do when he was much younger, waiting for his breathing to even out. 

She thinks of the half-filled form lying on his desk, the discarded sheet music she keeps finding in his trashcan. The boxing gloves he hasn’t touched in a month.

“You have all your life to figure that out, honey,” she says, “You don’t have to decide anything right now.”

There’s a sob coming from her, or him, she’s not sure. Maybe both.

“I just want to make  _ him  _ proud.”   
“Oh, Archie. I don’t think that’s going to be an issue.”

They stay like this for a while, healing together, until his stomach gargles and they laugh.

They end up cooking dinner together, and it tastes absolutely awful. Lucky for them, Pop’s takeout stays open reasonably late, and they end up eating in front of the tv.

The next morning, she finds the application form crumpled at the bottom of his bin.

  
  
  



	2. to new beginnings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright! Into the great unknown with this one. I had to create a couple of new characters, and wrap my mind around that because it's not something I'm usually a fan of, so I tried my best to make them enjoyable! One of them is most definitely inspired by a character from a totally different fandom that I absolutely love so... Hopefully, you'll love them too? Props to my dear [CuriousNymph](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CuriousNymph/pseuds/CuriousNymph/works) for beta reading this, and to [perfectlystill](https://archiveofourown.org/users/perfectlystill/pseuds/perfectlystill/works) for inspiring me with those Gilmore Girls parallels.

It’s weird, being in town when all his friends are gone. The streets are still busy with laughter, and the August sun still burns the same, but he feels different.

Pop’s seems empty without Veronica serving burgers and sassy one-liners, and he keeps hoping that Jughead and Betty are going to step in, all nauseating and in love.

It’s masochistic, he knows. He hasn’t spoken to her since she’s left, and he feels _empty_. He’s stopped stealing glances from his window, closed the blinds on that friendship.

It’s time to grow up.  
It’s ironic that he’d been Riverdale High’s Quarterback, when he himself is nothing like a leader. He follows, he always has, his friends and family the compass, directing him.

He breathes in. Of course, there are still things he’s decided for himself. Music, helping people. Boxing had been more of a way to survive, something to deal with the anger and the pain, but he’s not angry anymore. He hasn’t been in a while.

The gym is going well, and that fills him with pride, but at this point it’s more Munroe’s project than his. Tom’s keeping his father’s company afloat, and it’s starting to feel like Riverdale doesn’t need him as much as he needs it.

So he starts putting his things in order. 

Cleans up his room, taking down the posters of bands he no longer listens to.

Putting the photos back in the family album, with the exception of one, the one memory of her he allows himself to carry on. What’s a little wound compared to the scars he’s accumulated over the years anyway? 

He packs light, not really knowing where he’s going to go. 

Kisses his mother on the top of her head. It’s not a goodbye, he reassures her. He’ll be back in the fall. He just needs to make his own decisions, for a while.

He takes his father’s pick up truck, driving it down the familiar roads, wondering if this is how he’d felt when he was his own age.  
Slightly lost, slightly free, with the wind blowing down his face.

The cassette player is broken, of course, and keeps playing fifties Rock tunes. 

A mile out of town, he starts breathing again.  
The fields around him shine under the sun, and it starts feeling more like summer, starts smelling familiar, like high grass and laughter.   
  


There’s an old sign, battered by time, and his heart jumps in his throat when he recognizes it. It points to a summer camp, and for a second, he’s back in the backseat, his feet kicking with excitement, his and betty’s faces pressed against the window.

 _Summer’s only a mile away,_ the sign says.

He swerves right.

* * *

She’s not going to read it.

Betty stares at the envelope lying on her desk like it’s poisoned. 

He doesn’t have the right to do that to her. It’s not fair.

She looks around. Her dorm room is unsurprisingly sparse, grey walls that probably used to be white. She’s tried to cover them up with the pictures she brought in, but there aren’t nearly enough. 

It’s weird, not being around Jug, Veronica. Around him. 

The window they have gives on the campus green. There’s no yellow house, and no boy to wave back at her. 

She breathes in deeply. It’s time to grow up. 

She places her textbooks on the left-hand side, carefully realigns the tabs for the tenth time. She’s ready for this year to start, she tells herself when she steps into the cafeteria.   
She’s ready for things to change, for her to become the person she was always meant to be. 

Her student ID photo is horrendous; She texts it to Jughead and Veronica as she sits down by herself, nibbling on asinine food that’s not unlike the one in Riverdale High. Except there’s no one to steal her fries or to inhale their own plate at the speed of light.

Neither of them texts her back, and she’s left looking at the faces around her. Are some of them going to become her friends?

A flash of red hair walks by her, and she blinks it away.

They say you meet your closest friends in college, so she takes her plate, determined to at least try.   
It’s like her prayers get answered when she goes back to her room; her roommate’s finally moved in.

Her name is Rebecca, she learns, and it gets a little awkward when she comments on the amount of pink in Betty’s side of the room. She asks if she always wears her hair up, and Betty shakes her head, slightly vexed, before taking down the hair tie. Her roommate seems unimpressed.

She’s not mean, per se. Just uninterested, Betty tells herself. She’s still resolved to have one good conversation with her when her phone buzzes, Jughead’s name flashing on her screen.

“I’m going to head out,” Rebecca decides. “Don’t wait up, ponytail.”

Betty winces as she answers the phone.

“So! Are you all settled in?” Jug asks her, his voice bringing her back to a happier _now_ .   
“Yeah, I just met my roommate actually,” she says, tilting her head to make sure Rebecca’s gone. “She’s… okay, I guess.”   
“Uh-oh.”   
“It’s alright. She called me _ponytail_ ,”   
“Yikes. Are you sure it’s not Bret in a wig?”

She scrunches up her nose.  
“How’s Ohio?”   
“Flat.”

She laughs.  
“No, really, Betty. No wonder they have a good writing program here, there’s literally nothing else to do!”   
“Are you missing the seedy underbelly of Riverdale yet?” She smiles.

He pauses. It was meant as a joke, but he doesn’t take it as such.

“Kind of,” he concedes. “But I’m glad to start over.”

They talk for a little while, until Jug starts yawning and she sends him off to sleep with a -virtual- kiss.

She looks up at the photos she’s hung up. She misses him, she thinks as her finger traces the contour of his face. She misses all of them. Her eyes drift to the letter on her desk, and the record next to it.

She kicks off her shoes, sitting on her bed, the familiar tune of the sing-along record playing in the background. She takes a deep breath.

_Betty,_

_You’ve been my number one cheerleader._ _  
_ _You should have these, they wouldn’t exist without you._

_xxArchie_

She flips through the torn-up pages of his notebook. All of his songs are here, compiled. Some are on Pop’s receipts. Some are on sticky notes or Biology homework.

He’s right, he’s no good with words. Most of the lyrics are scratched up, with question marks everywhere and chords scribbled here and there. But it’s _him_ , and the lyrics ring earnest and true.   
It dawns on her that this is probably as close to a diary as it can be.

She squints, paying attention to the lyrics and her heart aches.   
Every song is about her. Every song is for her. 

Four years worth of Archie’s feelings, that he willingly gave to her. 

For the first time since that dreadful night sophomore year, she understands what it’s like to be in his shoes.

It’s never that he didn’t love her enough.  
It’s that he loved her too much.

When her roommate comes home, she pretends to not hear the sniffling sounds coming from Betty’s bed.

* * *

The camp looks nothing like he remembers, and exactly like it at once. The cabins are falling apart, the wood being eaten away by time, and old beach balls are discarded around the field.  
Still, the kids there don’t look at it any differently than he did when he was their age: they’re running around, playing capture the flag, too enthralled in their game to notice him walking by.

He smiles. Memories of Josie cutting Cheryl’s braid as Jason distracts her rush back. Betty frowning with concentration as she weaves the perfect friendship bracelet. He looks down at his keys, the remnant of it dangling from the keychain. 

“Are you here for the counselor position? Because I’m warning you, pal, if you’re not, we’re going to have a problem,” a voice asks.

He turns around, facing the smallest, stockiest woman he’s ever seen. She looks nothing like a camp director, with her baseball cap sharply tucked onto short, dark hair, her hands holding a rusty pitchfork. Despite the fact that he’s at least twice as tall as she is, he doesn’t doubt for a second that she could kick his ass. She looks like she’s itching to, as well.

He raises his hands.

“I was just driving around. I used to come here as a kid,” he explains.

She squints. A second passes. Then two. Then three.

“Wait a second. You’re that Andrews kid! Morey,” she starts, and when no one answers, she yells. “Morey!!”

“Here,” answers a panicked, middle-aged man. He’s wearing a vest — a vest! In the middle of one of the hottest summers Riverdale has ever seen, and he looks out of breath. Archie is about to advise him to lose it before he faints, but she hands the tall, practically bald guy a handkerchief, and that seems to be enough for him to regain his composure. He wipes his face, pulling on the sweater vest. 

Archie bites his cheek; they make quite the pair, her comically short, him as lanky as a telephone pole. The way she looks at him, angry and suspicious, finally triggers his memory.

“Miss Susie!” he smiles, taking a step to hug her, fully forgetting the _pitchfork_ she’s holding.

“Ah-pah-pah-pah! Not one step closer, Red. Don’t think I forgot about the time you threw up all your candy on my shoes.”

Morey nods, mumbling something that sounds like _“perfect driving moccasins”._

Archie winces.

“I was seven!”  
“What are you now, huh? Twenty?”   
“Eighteen.”

She eyes him up, face torn with disgust. 

“Jesus Christ. What do they feed you at school these days? You look like the 1989 Russian swim team.”

He scratches the back of his head.

“Are you… supposed to curse in front of the kids?”  
“Why not? It’s my fucking camp,” she groans, putting the pitchfork down.

She rubs her hands on her khakis and pulls a whistle out of her pocket. She looks at him, again, with beady little eyes, her mouth twisted in a thin line. She exchanges a meaningful look with Morey before asking:

“So, Andrews. Are you done with your little trip to memory lane?”  
“Oh. Well, uh…”   
“Can you count?”

He frowns.

“Yes?”  
“Can you add?”   
“Yeah! But—”   
“Do you play any kind of instrument, are you good with kids?”   
“I help run a community center for at-risk kids during the year, and uh, I play guitar?” he answers.

_Why on earth is he answering her questions?_

“Do you want a job?”  
“I—”

 _What?_   
“It’s a simple yes or no, Red. We need help, and as you can see, this shithole is falling apart. Do you want in, or not?”

He looks around. She’s not lying, they could definitely use all the help they could get. He takes a moment to think, carefully considering his options.

He nods.

“Yeah. Yes,” he says.

She gives him the smallest of smiles.

“Last question. Are you going to puke on my shoes again?” 

He grins.

“No, ma’am.”

She hands him the whistle.

“Great! You’re hired,” and before turning around, she addresses her partner: “Say hello to our new camp counselor, Morey.”

* * *

“Have you eaten anything, today?” Rebecca asks, and Betty’s head emerges from under her blanket.

“I’m fine,” she groans.  
“Okay, okay,” the other girl concedes, her hands raised up. “I just haven’t seen you do anything but study and sleep for the past month so…”

She’s right. Betty’s been busy trying to play catch up with the curriculum, throwing herself into her books, when she’s not on the phone with Jug. And when she’s not doing either, she tries to sleep, with little to no success.

It’s the guilt, the lying. They never talk about Archie, or Veronica, and she wonders if Jughead suspects anything. It’s eating her up, and she knows now that it’s more a question of when she confesses than whether she does it or not.

She’d thought that putting a stop to it, to quash it in the egg before she left would have given her enough closure to feel okay about it.

But for every dream she has about her and Jug reunited, Archie gets his own.

He’s everywhere, his boyish smile haunting her, his hand holding hers, his last embrace lingering. 

Veronica hasn’t replied to any of her messages or phone calls since she left, and Betty is pretty sure she knows why. She wonders if they broke up, or if she’s forgiven him. A sick, twisted part of her hopes she didn’t. They don’t deserve forgiveness for what they did. 

“Okay, that’s enough moping. Dining hall, let’s go,” Rebecca says, pulling the covers.  
“Woah, what are you doing?!”

“I can’t get a new roommate halfway through the semester, Cooper. You’re quiet, clean, and you don’t give me crap when I come back at 3 am. Also, you don’t snore. So I’m not letting you fall off the wagon before the school year even starts,” she says, grabbing Betty by the arm.

“Okay, fine! Let go, I need to change.”

They walk together to the dining hall in awkward silence.

Rebecca nods here and there, smiling at a couple of people. Betty stares at her, envious. She’s been here a month, and she hasn’t made any friends.

And now her roommate pities her so much she’s brought her to lunch. Pathetic.

They sit down, Betty’s back straight against the chair, and Rebecca munches on baby carrots.

It’s a good five minutes before either of them start talking. Rebecca scratches her throat.

“So, what’s your deal? High strung mom, distant dad? High school boyfriend you haven’t had the guts to break up with yet so you’re just waiting for the relationship to fizzle out?”

Betty glares at her.

“I love my boyfriend.”  
“Oh, so you do have one. Is it the guy who writes you songs? The moody one with the beanie?”

She shakes her head.  
“No, he— How do you know he wrote me songs?”

Rebecca shrugs.  
“I got bored one time when you were at the library. I looked around.”

Betty looks at her, gobsmacked. She doesn’t even look sorry, or ashamed. Her mother’s face flashes in her head, and she bangs her fist on the table.

“Are you kidding me?! You’re snooping through my things? Really?”

Rebecca blinks, obviously shocked at her outburst. _There we go,_ she thinks. This is when she realizes Betty is completely bonkers.

“I was actually looking for a condom, and you weren’t there. The songs were in your nightstand, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have looked.”

She takes a deep breath. _Oh._ That makes more sense.

“Wait, you have sex in our room?”  
“Where else am I supposed to go?”

Betty winces.

“Okay, a couple ground rules: not on my bed, NEVER on my bed. And you text me when you bring someone, so I know not to come in,” she sighs. “Here, give me your phone.”

She saves her number in her phone, not realizing Rebecca is now smiling at her.  
When she notices, she frowns.

“What?”  
“I like this side of you, you’re spunky, Betty Cooper,” she smirks, dangling a carrot in front of her face.   
“No one uses spunky anymore,” Betty retorts.   
“And no one older than thirteen puts their hair up in a ponytail and yet, here we are,” she grins smugly.

They start talking then, and slowly, gently, Betty finds it easier to breathe. It’s like swimming after a long time spent outside the pool. The first laps are cold, and hard to get through, but soon enough she finds her rhythm. Rebecca, or Becks — never Becky— is funny, in the wry, abrasive way people from the east coast often are.

When they’re done with their lunch, they’re not friends yet. But they’re a little bit closer to it than they were an hour before.

* * *

“Where on earth is that freaking _plunger_?”

Susie rummages next to his head, and he sighs.

“Are you done?” he says, rubbing his eyes.

It’s been two weeks of this. Working from dusk til dawn, building forts, setting up softball games, carrying the occasional kid making a break for it back to their cabin only to collapse with exhaustion on his bed, and start over the next day.

It’s a thankless job, and he loves every second of it.

It doesn’t matter that the whole camp is falling apart, and that Susie pretends she doesn’t care.  
He knows she does, because she’s still trying to fix it.

So he starts getting up earlier, giving Morey a helping hand with construction.

Susie forbids him from helping out in the kitchen. He still maintains it wasn’t his cooking, but food poisoning from that chili they used. 

The kids like him, too. He’s pretty popular with the girls, which makes Susie roll her eyes and Archie embarrassed when they ask to hold his hand to walk from one part of the field to another.

In the evenings, once everyone is sound asleep, he sits on Susie’s porch, playing guitar while she and Morey reminisce about their worst stories.  
“Ugh, those fucking twins! They were so creepy,” Susie says one night, the cigar she’s holding way too large for such a small hand.

“Should you be smoking that? We’re still close to the other cabin,” Archie says, and she glares at him.

“Don’t take away my one solace, Kid. Wait, you knew them, right? The Blossoms?”

“Yeah.”  
“I heard about him. Poor guy. Really gnarly,” she says, and Morey nods. “Do you still talk to her?”   
“We went to the same high school,” he says, not quite knowing how to break the news that Cheryl’s still not quite over the gruesome murder of her own brother.

“God, I hated them. Made me so uncomfortable with their twin speak. Between them, and that fucking ponytail of yours, gave me nightmares at night.”  
“What about Betty?” He says, not trying to sound too interested.

“She was just unbearable. You two never wanted to be split for any activities. Morey had to carry her back to the girls’ cabin every night because you two were always sneaking around and falling asleep. Little monsters,” she adds.

He smiles at the memory. They’d been inseparable, back then.

“She still has a ponytail,” he says, more to himself than to them.

“Oh, really? Go figure.”

He pulls up his wallet, taking out the picture of them to show her.

Susie nods, her eyes trained on him.

“So she’s still your girlfriend, huh? Good for you,”

He swallows, hard, his mouth suddenly tasting like gasoline.

“No. We never dated,” he says, a little bitter, a little sad.

She doesn’t reply. Only nods, puffing smoke out of her cigar. 

His hands start playing _her_ song absent-mindedly, and he braces himself for the abrasive comments that will follow. 

It’s their little game. He plays, Susie gives ‘creative feedback’. He waits, still plucking the chords, until Morey chimes in:

“Actually, I like this one.”

Susie nods.

“It’s almost bearable. Pity for Ponytail, she’s missing out.”

* * *

“Betty, talk to me,” Jughead sighs.

It’s closer to a whine. It’s been two months of this. Of phone calls, videos, missed connections.

She doesn’t know what he wants her to say. Her mind’s made up.

“I’m sorry, I just don’t think I can afford coming back for Thanksgiving this year.”  
“New Haven isn’t even that far.”   
“Are you _bargaining_ right now?”

This is bad. She’s not usually snippy, not with him. Maybe it’s the coffee. Coffees? Or the fact that no matter the class, she’s completely lost. She doesn’t even know where to start anymore, it’s like she’s completely forgotten how to study; Books and papers keep piling up on her desk, her grades are getting worse and worse, and now this.

She sighs.  
“I’m sorry, it’s just… I have a lot of work.”   
“I know,” he says, and she tries to ignore the disappointment in his voice. “I just miss you. I haven’t seen you in months.”   
“You see me when we facetime,” she tries, the sorriest of smiles on her face.

“Yeah.”

Ah, bitterness. A Jughead Jones Special. It was cute when they’d just started dating, and everything felt fresh, dangerous. When she had hours to spend deciphering all his kinds of broodings. 

She clears her throat. 

“I miss you too, okay? I just… I want to focus on my future. What’s a Thanksgiving away, when we have our entire lives to spend together?”

She hears it in her own voice, the lie, and she wonders when he went from someone she’d kill to spend five minutes with, to a person she barely recognizes.  
It’s not that he’s changed so much as he hasn’t. She’s the one who’s different. He’s still driven, focused on unraveling the mysteries of life, always ready to jump into the underbelly of a town.   
She finds herself exhausted of mysteries.

She’d rather sit home on the porch, drinking tea with— 

She stops herself. He hasn’t talked to her since that night, and she’s not even sure he knows she won’t come to Thanksgiving.

“Have you heard from Archie?” she says, and she can feel Jug tense up through the line.  
“He’s fine, as far as I’m aware. He’s spending the holidays in Chicago with his mom and her girlfriend.”   
“Oh, that’s good!”   
“Don’t you guys talk?”   
“I’m just busy with school. You’re basically the only person I talk to, except my mom…” She replies.

She bites her nails.

“Betty,” he starts.  
“Yeah?”   
“Did something— ”   
“Oh, I think I hear Becks come back. I gotta go, Love you!”

She hangs up, trying to ignore Rebecca’s judgemental look.

“Eventually, you’re going to have to do it,” she says, flipping through the pages of her magazine.

“I know,” she sighs.

* * *

His flight to New Haven gets cancelled, and Jughead’s forced to make a stopover to New York for a night.

It’s romantic, he thinks. He’s doing it for her, a grand gesture for Betty. If she can’t come to the mountain, let it come to her. Something like that.

It’s only when he ends up stranded in Laguardia that he realizes his mistake. There’s no one he knows, here, and he’s spending a lot of money on what’s going to end up being a day or two.

But she likes grand gestures, and he wants to see her.

She’s been pulling away, lately. 

He’d like to think it’s because of school. She works hard, always has, and it’s one of the things he likes most about her. But there’s a growing feeling, something gnawing at his chest, like he already knows it’s the beginning of the end, for them.

But he loves her, she’s the first girl, the only girl for him.

So he gathers his things, and dials Veronica.

Strangely enough, she welcomes him to the suite she shares with her friend Katy. She seems to be doing well, Barnard fits her like a glove. 

They share a drink, reminiscing on the good old days — which seem further and further away each day. He ends up mentioning Archie, and she winces.

“I’m sorry. I heard about it but you were already gone,” he says.

She shakes her head, pushing her dark bangs away from her face.

“It’s okay, it seems like it was a lifetime ago,” she laughs.

It sounds fake to him, but he knows Veronica enough not to push her. She deals with grief in a quiet, personal way, and who is he to stand against that? 

“We were poorly fitted, him and I,” she admits, looking at the amber liquid at the bottom of her glass.

Jughead laughs.

“The most beautiful girl in school and the star Quarterback? What’s more perennial than that?”

She gives him a look.

“I’m not going to discuss my relationship with you, Jughead Jones. I know what you’re fishing for.”

He gulps. It’s easy to forget, sometimes, that while he was playing Tracy True with Betty and solving mysteries around town, she was already dealing with an entirely different game of chess; her father a worthy opponent and more than a few times their foe. 

She’s sharp, always has been, and it’s a disservice, then, to underestimate her. He decides to go with the truth.

“I just want to know,” he pleads.

There’s something in his gut, something replaying in the back of his mind. Betty’s eyes looking away from his face, her less and less frequent phone calls. The distance she seems to put between them, whether it’s voluntary or not.

“Jug, you’re only going to hurt yourself,” Veronica warns.  
“Just tell me. Why did you two break up, really? And don’t tell me it was time. You guys were determined to make it work, and you just threw that away a day before you left?”

She swallows, hard. 

“He likes _her_ , doesn’t he.”

She doesn’t answer, but her eyes tell him all he needs to know. He wants to punch a hole in the wall. 

“Does she know?”  
“He wrote her a song,” she says, bitterly. “Jug, you should let it go. You’re still together, aren’t you? She picked _you_.”

It’s a fair point, one that quiets the roars in the pit of his stomach enough for him to notice Veronica’s tearful eyes.

They’ve never been that close, him and her, so when he places a hand, gingerly, on top of hers, he’s not sure it’s the right move. She squeezes it, a sad smile on her face.

“It’s okay, I’ll get over it. I’m mostly over it,” she states. “It just stirs up sometimes, and it hurts that Betty never talked to me about it. I trusted her,” Veronica frowns. 

“And she hasn’t tried to talk to you since?”  
“Oh, she has. I just… Can’t bring myself to talk to her. A part of me wants to know, if something happened, if he lied when I asked about feelings getting stirred up when we pulled that stint. God, I just… I just feel so guilty, and angry, like I pushed them together,” she sighs, and really, it’s weird that they never became closer friends, because for two people coming from vastly different backgrounds, their thinking process is surprisingly similar.

“I’ve been thinking the same thing. I keep replaying it in my head, but it’s different, for me. I didn’t have to see it.”

He rubs his eyes with his palms. He hates this, being jealous of a possibility. And Veronica’s right, if he did try something, Betty picked him, not Archie.

Somehow, that doesn’t make him feel any better.

“All I can say is, it’s better when you don’t know, believe me. So maybe stop shaking the beehive so hard,” she says, getting up a little wobbly.

He tries to steady her, and she brushes him off.

“I’m fine. I’ll be fine. Veronica Lodge is a big girl.”

She closes the door to her bedroom, leaving him alone in a living room he doesn’t know, with thoughts he can’t push away.  
It’s well past three when he finally falls asleep, and the next morning, Veronica’s left him a key with a note.

 _If you ever need a friend in the city, or a shoulder to cry on instead of paper and a pen._ _  
_ _V._

He packs his bag, determined to get to New Haven on time for the festivities.

* * *

“Betty, hey. Betty,” Rebecca’s hushed whisper barely managed to pull her out of her slumber.

“What;” She groans.  
“The dean wants to see you,’ she drops down at her own desk.   
“Oh crap! Ok, how do I look,” she mumbles, feeling her hair sticking to her cheek.   
“I don’t know, what are you aiming for?”   
“Respectable? Smart!” she panics. 

Becks gives her one look, one that says _Good luck with that_ , and Betty jumps out of bed. 

“Ugh, I forgot to set my alarm, I worked too late, and—”  
“Save that for the dean, Cooper.”

She looks around, frantically searching for something, anything that will help her look more awake than she really is. Without so much as a look, Rebecca points to her desk.

“Coffee’s lukewarm, by the way.”

She gulps it at the speed of light, giving her roommate a thumbs up.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” Becks says.

“Uh… thanks?”  
“Your pants, you _animal_!”

“Oh.”

She runs down the hall, not even bothering to tie her hair up, closing buttons to her cardigan in haste. Betty breathes in, giving herself two seconds to compose herself before knocking on the door.

“You wanted to see me, sir?”

She’s not fully awake yet, so half of the dean’s words kind of jumble together. All she makes out is _‘workload too heavy’_ , _‘perhaps consider dropping some classes’_ , _‘don’t bite off more than you can chew, Miss Cooper.”_

She nods, stuck between the big mahogany desk and the door, and she politely waits until the end of his lecture to get up, and take off. 

Thankfully, the tears only start rolling once she’s back in her dorm, and by then, no one cares. Students crying could basically be in the brochure, if Yale marketing agents were a little more honest.

When she steps in her room, she blinks.

“So, uhm, your boyfriend is here…” Rebecca announces flatly.

Jughead stands in front of her, beanie-clad, a bag on his shoulder.

“Happy Thanksgiving,” he smiles sheepishly.

* * *

He’s been thinking about it a lot. 

Summer camp. It’s in the back of his mind when he’s studying, trying to get his credits. How happy he’d been, working for Susie and Morey. The smiles of the kids there, and the tears when they’d have to announce this was going to be their last year.

It shouldn’t have come as a surprise, with the state of things. The camp should have closed years ago. They’d only kept it open for the southside kids, the ones not fortunate enough to have pool parties and trips to California.

It makes him angry. They don’t deserve any of it. They’re good people, and every kid should get a chance at a good summer. God knows he’s had his fair share of them, his best friend in toe, his father’s smile watching over them. 

He mentions it to his mom, the camp. She can’t keep from ruffling his hair like a kid, telling him he reminds her of Fred, always picking up stray dogs.

She agrees to help him figure out some numbers with Andrews Construction, and he asks if any of the teens at the community center would be interested in volunteering. 

It’s funny, he thinks again, that he thinks of himself as less of a leader, and more of a follower, because when he starts asking, people just start coming together.

“It’s called charisma, doofus! Look at you! You’re built like GI Joe’s ginger cousin,” Susie moans, hiding her misty eyes behind her baseball cap.

“They just want to help. A lot of these kids came here, just like me. We just want to help,” he says, and Morey squeezes his wrist.

“She means to say thanks,” Morey chimes in, and boy, if looks could kill, that one would have taken the cake.

“What do you want from us, Ginger Spice? Money? Because we don’t have it!”  
He smiles.

“If I’m honest… I’m being selfish. I just want to keep the memories alive,” he confesses, his hand scratching the back of his head.

She looks at him for a while, chewing on what he hopes is gum— it’s definitely tobacco— before finally saying:

“Sometimes, you remind me so much of him. Your dad.”

He frowns.

“People keep telling me that.”  
“People are _idiots_. I went to High School with him and I’ll tell you that, he couldn’t add for shit, and he failed history twice. But that chivalrous thing you’re doing? That’s pure him,” she grunts, and he feels the tears coming up.

He knows that coming from her, that’s a compliment. But he also knows that if he starts crying in front of her, he’ll never hear the end of it.

“Thanks, Suze.”  
“Don’t mention it,” she replies, pulling out her handkerchief.

Because she pretends not to hear the knot in his voice, he pretends not to see her wiping her eyes.

“So, do we have a deal?”

She spits in her hand.

“Let’s do this, carrot top.”

* * *

Rebecca jumps out of the room faster than a housecat, which is to say, not fast at all.

“I’ll just let you two…lovebirds…reconnect…” she says, her face contorted into an uncomfortable grimace.

The door closes, and Betty considers her boyfriend. Her boyfriend, who traveled all the way from Ohio to come and visit her during Thanksgiving break, unannounced. Unwanted.

“Hi,” she says, her back stiff, her cheeks still freshly marked by tears.

“Hey, are you okay? You look like hell,” he says, grabbing the sides of her face.

He searches her eyes, and everything feels _wrong._

“Why are you here?” She asks, and he frowns.  
“I was trying to be romantic. What’s happening?” he says, and she closes her eyes.

She can’t do this right now. It’s too much, not when she has the fresh taste of failure still on the tip of her tongue. Not when he’s been thriving in Ohio, writing book after book, even dabbling in poetry, all the while investigating God knows what.

“I just, I have a lot of work,” she says, and he takes a step back.

“And I don’t? Betty, I came here to see you, because I missed you and I was worried about you, and you’re treating me like a stranger.”

She swallows, hard. The tears are rolling down her face again. _God, she’s tired, can’t he see that?_

“I miss you too, and I told you that. Repeatedly, and you didn’t listen! You don’t listen, obviously, or else you wouldn’t be there.”

Jughead takes off his beanie, twisting it between his fingers. He looks exhausted, too.

“I don’t understand. Any girl would be happy to see her boyfriend.”

Her eyebrows shoot up.

“I told _you_! School is driving me insane, the classes are insane! I needed to focus this weekend. I really needed it, and now you’re forcing this on me, and you’re acting like I’m ungrateful, like I’m the bad one, when you’re not paying any attention to what I want!”

He scoffs, and there he is. The other side of him, the cold anger, the snake coiling back, rearing its ugly head.

A Serpent through and through.

“Okay, you want to do this? Fine, let’s talk about paying attention then,” he says. “You know how much it hurts, to see that for every five texts I send, I get one back? To know that if I didn’t call you, you wouldn’t call me back? To think that oh, I don’t know, maybe she has a secret boyfriend, because you barely talk about anything anymore, anything that isn’t work and classes and books, or Rebecca’s stupid flip flops she leaves in the entryway,”

She blinks.

“Don’t be ridiculous.”  
“I’m not! It’s a normal concern, and I’m expressing it!”

She bites the inside of her cheek.

“Why are you so insecure? Do you see me hiding a guy here? Do you see any space on my schedule for a fun little afternoon delight?” She grabs her planner, tempted to shove it in his face.

“I’m insecure because you hide things from me,” he says. “Because you lie to me, and I’m nice enough to pretend I don’t notice. But I’m not Veronica, I’m not going down without a fight,”

She freezes.

“What does Veronica have to do with it?”  
“You really think we’re stupid, don’t you? Look at your room, Betty,” he says, pointing to the photos. The record, the diary she packed up. “Everywhere I look, he’s there. He’s still there,” he says, his voice shaking.

“Who?” She asks dully, because she doesn’t know what else to say.

“Archie! It’s always him. Thick skulled, bird-brained Archie Andrews. I bet you just love it, knowing he’s cooped up back home in Riverdale, looking out his window every night, longing for you.”

She feels her face break. The mask, carefully constructed, sliding off. 

“Don’t make this about Archie. Don’t bring him into this,”  
“You’re still protecting him, unbelievable! Do you guys talk about me, when you’re together? Do you laugh at my expanse? Silly Jughead, writing his novels in cornfields—”

“I haven’t talked to Archie since we graduated! I picked you, again, and again. I told him I loved you, that we couldn’t—”

She stops herself, horror filling up her eyes. 

“You told him what?” 

She takes a step forward. She can still fix this, if she wants. Does she want to? 

“Nothing! I told him I love you, and that I never want to hurt you,” she pleads.  
“What’s the part you’re not telling me about, then? Because that’s the one that matters, Betty.”

She blinks the tears away. No, No, No. This is all wrong.

“I— I-”  
“What’s left of you when I strip the lies away, huh?” he says, grabbing her wrists.

“You’re hurting me!”  
“You hurt me _first_ ,” he says, pain flaring in his eyes.

“Okay, that’s enough,” Rebecca says.

She steps in the room, completely disregarding this mess of a situation they’re in, and grabs Jughead’s backpack.

“I think I’d like you to leave, now, and come back when you’ve both had more than two hours of sleep,” she says flatly, and Betty looks at her, horrified.

He quiets down, releasing her wrists, his eyes welling up with tears.

“Yeah. Yeah, okay,” he concedes.

He gives her one look, disappointed, angry, ashamed before walking away.

She falls to the floor, and cries until Rebecca’s arms wrap around her.

“Jesus, that was gnarly,” she says, and Betty bites back a strangled laugh.  
“I’m sorry,” she replies.

Her roommate sighs.  
“It’s okay. But next time I microwave fish in the hall, I’m bringing it back here.”

* * *

She waits until Rebecca’s sound asleep to pull out her phone.

She opens up her drafts.

_Veronica,_

_I’m sorry. For everything._

_I hope Barnard is treating you well_

She hits send, and gets out of bed, wrapping herself in her robe. 

As she steps outside her room, she presses call. He picks up on the second ring.

“Hey,” she says, relieved he’s bothered to answer.  
“Hey,” Jughead replies, his tone still a little cold. A little hurt.

“I’m sorry, for earlier.”  
“Me too. I think I was expecting things to go differently,” he says.   
“Where are you right now?”   
“At a crappy motel, by the road. I could come back,” he replies cautiously.

“No,” She owes him a proper explanation. He came all this way. “Let’s meet halfway.”

Halfway ends up being a crappy diner, a poor man’s version of Pop’s, really. He’s staring at her, and she takes a deep breath. There’s no easy way to do this.

“I’m flunking most of my classes, Jug.”  
“What?”   
“When you came by this morning, I had just been to the Dean’s office. He’s advising me to take on less classes, and to focus on only a few.”   
“Well, he’s wrong, and he doesn’t know you, you can do anything you set your mind to, we’ve all seen it,” he says, and she thinks it’s sweet.   
“No, Jug. He’s right. I feel like I’m drowning. I can barely pay attention in class anymore, and I feel like I’m constantly trying to play catch up. It’s exhausting. I’m exhausted,” she admits, placing her hands on her forehead.

He stays quiet for a while, a timid hand touching her elbow. She looks up, avoiding his gaze.

“And…you were right. About Archie. I can’t let him go. I try, and I try, but all I do is hurt you, and I hurt him, and I hurt myself. It’s not fair,”

He rubs his eyes.

“Do I wanna know?”  
“We kissed. Once.”   
“When?”   
“Before the variety show. During rehearsal.”

He looks at her, pained.

“So while I was studying to graduate at the same time as you, you were having fun with Archie? Classy, Betty. Real classy,”

She shakes her head.

“It wasn’t like that. I was just…”

She could lie. She could make it easy, say it was because they’d had a fight that day. That it was just to comfort him. That he kissed her; that it was just a spur of the moment thing, and it didn’t mean anything.

“I wanted him to,” she says, and watches as Jughead bites his lip to keep the tears from coming out.

“Why?”  
“I don’t know. It’s not like I stopped loving you, or didn’t remember you existed. I just...I wanted him to kiss me, and he did.”

“And that’s all you did?”  
“Yes,” She says.

 _No_ , she thinks. 

“So he _didn’t_ write you a love song?”

She looks at him, at his slightly accusatory eyes. Her coffee comes in, she drinks it. It’s watered down, but it’s warm. 

“He did. I told him it didn’t matter.”  
“So you really did pick me,” he mutters.

“Yeah.”

He quiets down, stirring a packet of sugar into his own cup before asking:  
“Do you love me?”   
“Yes.”   
“Do you love him?”

She pauses.

“I’m trying not to,” she says, because it’s the most honest she can be.

He closes his eyes. She’s hurting him a thousand different ways, she knows. But in a weird way, she feels relieved. Like it was always meant to be all out on the table.

“You should have slept with him,” he finally says.

She chokes on her cup.  
“What?!”

He gets up, grabbing his jacket.

“You two are obsessed with each other. And I can’t stand by your side while you’re wondering what it would be like to be with him. I deserve better,” he says, his voice shaking.  
“Jug, I chose you!”   
“Did you? Or did you just settle?” he bites back, already halfway out of the diner.

She doesn’t follow him.

* * *

Her eyes are puffy and red, and when she blinks, the words on the page start dancing. 

She rubs them, trying to focus again. This is way harder than she’d anticipated. Even with fewer classes. But she’s determined.  
  


She looks at her phone. It’s way past midnight, and while Jug’s probably still awake, she’s not exactly ready to try to talk to him yet. He’d flown back the day after their fight, and they’d both agreed they needed time.

“It’s not a breakup,” she’d told Rebecca. “It’s just a break,” and her friend had rolled her eyes.

Veronica had texted her back, a simple I _still need time._

So she had given it to her.

 _  
_ She breathes in. She doesn’t need to talk. She needs to _sleep_. It’s becoming more and more elusive as the year goes, and what started as a couple of all-nighters here and there is now a disaster of a sleeping schedule.

She can do this. She thinks she can. She’s Betty Cooper. She’s put bad guys in jail, survived a family crazier than an afterschool special, all the while writing for the school’s journal, cheerleading and keeping her grades up.

She looks at her phone again. 

She’s done all of this and more. She’s just never done it _alone_.

She presses call. There’s no chance he’s still awake anyway.

“Betty?”

If her heart skips a beat, it’s probably because of the coffee.

“Hey, Arch. Long time, no see?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... What happened is that I didn't expect this chapter to be this long and had to split it in two. The bad news is it ends right here, but the good one is the next one is already half written so the next update could come sooner than expected? I hope you had fun reading this :), by the way, I'm also on [twitter](http://www.twitter.com/q_constellation) so come have a chat if you like!


	3. Does he feel like home to you?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for all the encouraging comments, everyone! It's made writing much easier, I honestly couldn't stop smiling. As usual, thanks to the wonderful [CuriousNymph](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CuriousNymph/pseuds/CuriousNymph/works) for beta reading this and being the wind beneath my wings. Have fun reading this!

He jolts up, as if struck by lightning. It’s her voice on the other end of the line, and it courses through his veins like adrenaline. If he was foolish enough to think he’d been over her, he’s sorely mistaken.

“Hey! Uh, hi.”

He smacks his forehead against the wall.  _ Top-notch conversation, Andrews. _

_ “ _ Is everything okay? I heard a bang.”   
“Bumped my knee against my nightstand,” he replies, his breath stuck in his throat.

_ God, why are his palms so sweaty? _

“I’m sorry to call out of the blue,” Betty’s voice sounds strained, stretched thin.

He doesn’t ponder on the fact that after six months of not talking to her, he can still identify every single indentation in her breathing pattern, when he can’t even remember his latest Biology class. Go figure.

“It’s okay,” he starts, not really knowing where to go from there. “Did… Did something happen? Is Jughead okay?”

There’s a sharp sound on the other end of the phone, and his heart skips a beat. It’s a sound that says something’s not right between them, and while a part of him rejoices at the idea, the bigger one just hates himself for even reacting like this.

“He’s fine.”

There’s a long pause, and he’s about to start talking about camp, her mother’s growing vegetable garden, literally anything to keep hearing her voice, when she says:

“We’re sort of on a break right now.”   
“ _ Oh _ .”   
“Yeah, school is hard. Harder than I expected it to be, if I’m honest.”

It’s starting to sound like she’s swallowing tears, and he hates that when he looks outside his bedroom window, there’s no light on the other side, because it means he can’t just jump in and hug her sadness away the way he used to.

“I’m sorry to hear that, Betty.”

He pauses. Everything he says sounds so awkward, so stilted. He desperately wants to pretend that this is another normal conversation, that he didn’t spend the last few months with her broken-hearted face replaying in the back of his mind. 

“Do you want to talk about it?” he tries.   
“I haven’t really told anyone.”   
“Try me.”

There’s a long silence on the other end, and when she finally answers, her voice is small.

“I’m afraid I’m disappointing everyone. I’m flunking out of school, and they’re asking me to drop some classes to make my workload easier.”   
“And that’s disappointing, how?”

She lets out a frustrated sigh.   
“You know how! Everyone always expects me to be the best, especially my mom. It’s like… Failure is not an option, and if I fail-  _ when I fail _ \- at this point, I’m not going to be her daughter anymore.”

“You’re more than a bunch of grades on a paper, Bets.”

She pauses.

“Wow. I haven’t heard you call me that since…”   
“—Cheryl’s 11th birthday party?”

He can hear her smile, and it makes his heart swell.

  
“Oh my gosh, do you remember?”   
“Which part, the inflatable gothic castle, or the  _ five _ professional clowns?!”

She laughs, and it’s like he’s breathing air for the first time after months of drowning. 

“ _ Seven _ . I counted them.”   
“Well, there was only one car, so…”

She snickers.

“Stop it! I’m gonna wake up the whole dorm!”

He’s missed this so much. Missed his best friend, his confidante. The girl he’d carried on his back the entire way home from Sweetwater River after she rolled her ankle on a wet stone. The girl he thought he’d marry one day.

“Arch?”   
“Yeah?”   
“Thank you. For the songs.”

He tilts his head back, taking one long breath.

“Betty...”   
“I know,” she says, softly, and it makes him think that maybe they’re okay. That maybe she’ll forgive him for taking so long to get to her. Too long.

He wants to tell her that she doesn’t need to worry about returning his feelings; that he’ll have her any way she wants, as long as she’s part of his life. It’s been far too lonely without her. 

“I’ve missed you,” is all that comes out, and he silently groans.

_ Come on, Archie. Don’t ruin this. _

“You’re not mad at me?”   
“I could never be mad at you,” he says, because it’s the truth.   
“Not even when I dyed your hair green and you had to shave it all?”

He smiles.

“Okay, maybe that one time.”   
“I’ve missed you too, you know.”

He feels it, the hope, crawling up his stomach, making its way into his heart. Is this how she felt, sophomore year?  _ God, this is awful _ . He’s never going to be able to make it up to her, not in a million years.

“Arch?” She asks, and he answers too quickly. Too eagerly.   
“Yeah?”   
“Can we be… friends again?”

It’s like tripping on a step on your way up the stairs. He loses his footing, but he tries to think about it this way: it makes sense. They make sense as friends. Always have. And if that’s what she wants, he’ll give it to her.

“When did we ever stop?” he answers.

And just like that, they get back into it.

They start talking about life. Hers, at Yale. Her classes, her shortcomings. His, in Riverdale, juggling the Gym and Community College. He doesn’t want to bother her with summer camp yet. He still wants to hold onto it, have one thing he keeps to himself.

Well, _ two. _

She sighs.

“This is so weird. I keep thinking I’m going to turn back, and you’ll be there.”   
“I know. Every once in awhile I look up from my desk, and I expect to see you, putting your hair up.”   
“You know, I’m thinking of cutting it.”   
“Really?”   
“Yeah. I’m tired of looking like an American Girl doll.”

She’s changing, he realizes. Growing up, growing out.

“Well, I’ve always liked you with your hair down,” he breathes.   
“Yeah?” She asks, and he  _ thinks _ — thinks! she might be pleased.    
“Yeah,” he smiles. “Send me a picture when you do?”   
“Or I could just facetime you.”

Blood rushes to his face, and his brain screams  _ no, absolutely not, _ this is going to be a disaster, that he doesn’t need to make it any harder for himself.

“Now?”

He’s going to punch himself in the throat.

_ This is why people say you don’t think, Archie. _

“No,” He can practically hear her scrunch up her nose in disgust. “Not now. I look like a nightmare.”   
“Oh, I’ve seen you pre-Accutane,” he smirks, and she scoffs.

“Hey! We both did. And you promised to never bring it up again!”   
“Oh, I had my fingers crossed behind my back the entire time,” he smiles. 

It’s so easy, talking to her. It’s like she never left. Like she’s still lying next to him, her fingers holding his. They keep talking, and after a while, he lets his head rest on his pillow. If he closes his eyes, he can almost imagine her.

He breathes in, at ease.   
“Arch?”   
“Yeah?”   
“You sound good. Like things are okay,” she starts. “Are they?”

He pauses, and he can see her right now, her cat-like eyes piercing into his soul.

He smiles.

“Yeah. Things are okay.”

* * *

Her second semester actually starts going more smoothly, and with her head out of the water, she can see things a little more clearly.

She breaks up with Jughead, officially this time, over the phone. She expects it to be messy, but he just sounds relieved. Like he’d been waiting for it.

Veronica eventually gets back to her. They reconnect, tentatively, calling each other a few times. It’s still weird between them, but they’re getting there.

She hangs out with Rebecca outside of their room; outside of campus, even.

She knows which snacks to bring back from the vending machine, the good ones, and how to hit it just right to get a second serving.

She’s adapting to her new life, she thinks, a little proudly. A little sad.

Archie’s the only person she texts regularly at this point. He keeps her on the loop, tells her about her mom’s latest crazy conspiracy theory and Pop’s dabble into danish pastries.

She looks down at his latest message, a photo of a History report with a thumbs down.

She smiles. She likes that he’s trying, and she likes that he’s doing it for himself.

_ You’re gonna be fine,  _ she texts back.

The upside-down crying emoji he sends her makes her laugh. Without thinking about it too much, she presses call.

“I’m so screwed,” he says the second the call connects.

She rolls her eyes, an amused smile on her lips.

“Seriously, Arch. It’s History, the curriculum never changes. You’re going to ace this.”   
“I don’t know, I feel like there’s a war I’ve forgotten about, somehow.”

She laughs.

“Do you want to go over it with me?”   
“You’re not busy?”   
“Hm, no, I have an hour or two ahead of me. Shoot.”

He reads her what he’s written, and she points out a few things. She ends up losing track of time, launching herself into a lecture on the Civil War.

“I forgot how good you were at this,” he says, and she can hear the smile in his voice.

It makes her heart do a weird little somersault, and she frowns.

“What do you mean?”   
“Teaching me like I’m a person, and not a moron,” he answers.   
“Archie, I never thought you were dumb,” she says. “You just need a little help to focus, sometimes.”

He chuckles.

‘Ha! Story of my life.”   
“Seriously,” she adds. It’s important to her that he knows he’s not failing, or stupid, or whatever insult he got thrown his way growing up. “Everyone learns differently. You just need to find the way that works for you.”

He sighs.   
“The way that works for me is robbing you of your study time, and getting you to explain community college History to me, apparently.”   
“You’re not robbing me of anything. I’m offering. It’s what friends do,” she says.

“You’re the best, you know that?”

If she blushes, it’s because the sun is getting warmer in New Haven.

“I’m just trying to meet you halfway, Arch.”

* * *

He gets an A on his paper. A minus, but an A nonetheless.

Betty sends him handwritten flashcards via mail, and it’s the closest he’s even been to getting a love letter from her.   
They’re pink, obviously, and he reads them over a thousand times.

He really doesn’t deserve her.

He supposes they must have stuck out his bag because when he steps into Susie’s office, she’s holding on to one of them.

“Nice handwriting, Anne Shirley! Didn’t know you liked Pretty in Pink as much as Morey,” she grins.   
“I’m done with the front house, if you want something else to criticize,” he replies, rubbing his sweat-soaked face with his tee.

He’s worked at the camp every single weekend since winter ended, and it’s beginning to look like something. Some guys at Andrews construction have started to help, here and there, volunteering their time in exchange for spots for their children.

She follows him outside, Morey in tow, and suddenly, he’s a little nervous. He’s poured his heart and soul into this, but when has that been enough?

He grimaces.

“It’s okay if—“

“Holy shit,” Susie curses.

Morey mumbles something about birdhouses reminding him of A-frames appreciatively. He’s still wearing the vest. Archie supposes it’s a year-round look.

“So? Not too shabby, huh?”

Susie’s not used to that kind of attention. She’s also not used to having tears welling up in her eyes.

“What’s happening? Morey?”   
“I think you’re cry—” he starts, and she elbows him in the guts. “--ing. Must be those allergies,” he tries.

“Here,” Archie says, handing her her own handkerchief.

She clears her throat.   
“Well, Red. You don’t look it, but when you get into it, you deliver.”

He thinks of the memories kids like Eddie’s cousin are going to make there. He hopes they’ll be at least half as good as his own.

He smiles the entire way home, and when he lies down on his bed that night, he’s in such a good mood that he presses call out of habit.   
She answers the phone on the second ring.

“Hey Bets,” he says, smiling from ear to ear.    
“Hey Arch. Sorry, Uhm, could I call you back later?”

He sits up. She sounds stressed.

“What’s happening? Are you okay?”   
  


* * *

“Um, yeah, everything’s fine, I just— I pulled an all-nighter yesterday and now I can’t sleep,” she confesses.

“I thought you had the hang of it?”

She does. But writing the cards had taken more time than she’d planned out for, and she’d had to catch up with her own reading material the next day.

“I have. It’s just… midterms are coming, and I felt unprepared,” she lies.   
“You? Unprepared? That’s a first.”

She smiles.

“And yet, here we are… I’ve been lying in bed for the past two hours, and nothing. I’ve tried everything: podcasts, books, crappy old sitcoms…”   
“Is there anything I can do to help?”

She shakes her head.

“Unless you have a secret, magical way to make me fall asleep within the next hour, I don’t think so.”   
“I might have something,” he replies, and she hears him clear his throat, the twang of a guitar resonating behind him.

She blinks.

“Archie, what are you doing?”   
“I’m just gonna sing until you fall asleep,” he simply says, and God, had she been there, she would have hugged him.    
“You don’t have to,” she starts.   
“How long did you spend on those flashcards, Betty?” he asks, tuning the chords in the background.   
“Not that long,” she replies, biting her lip.

He chuckles.   
“You’re such a liar. Just let me do this for you, okay?”

She wants to protest, but he’s already started playing, and the sound immediately relaxes her.

“Don’t worry, no original material, I promise. I’ll stick to lullabies,” he says, and then he starts singing.

* * *

He sings until his voice sounds the wrong kind of raw, and then he continues playing random chords, soft enough to be able to hear if she’s still there, or not.

“You know,” she says after a while, her voice heavy with sleep, “I wonder what the rest of it sounds like, sometimes.”   
“The rest of what?”   
“ _ My song _ ,” she yawns.

His heart doesn’t skip a beat; it skips the whole sequence.

“Do you want to hear it?”

There’s a pause, and he wonders if she’s fallen asleep.

“Would that be weird?”   
“No,” he replies, his cheeks warming up.

He clears his throat. His voice is practically gone, but he tries anyway. He sings the way he wished he could have sung in the bunker, soft and low.

_ There's no warning when everything changes _ _   
_ _ You let down your guard and I saw something strange _ _   
_ _ I thought, she's not made for this world _ _   
_ _ And neither am I _

_ 'Cause you make me wanna be _ _   
_ _ Stronger than I am _ _   
_ _ Maybe I'm reaching, misplacing a feeling _ _   
_ _ There's no way to know but to try _

_ So give me tonight _ _   
_ _ I don't know much _ _   
_ _ But I know this feels right _ _   
_ _ So give me tonight _ _   
_ _ If you carry the torch _ _   
_ _ I'd follow the light _

“If you carried the torch, I’d follow the light too,” she says, almost too softly for him to hear.

She hangs up.

He can’t find sleep for another hour.

* * *

The next time he calls, she’s eating a power bar, and the crumbs are all over her face when she answers.

“Am I disturbing you? You look busy,” he says, squinting at the screen.

She pokes her tongue at him.

“I’m eating a snack in between homework. What’s up?”   
“It’s my mom’s birthday next week, and I have no idea what to get her.”   
“Hmmm, what are you looking for?”   
“Something that says  _ ‘thanks for sticking up with me, I promise I won’t try to deep fry a turkey indoors ever again?’ _ ”

She laughs.

“Just get her something pretty, in a color she likes.”

He frowns. His hair is messy, and she resists the urge to try and reach across the screen to push it out of his eyes.

“Have we met? I’m still wearing the same shoes I had sophomore year.”   
“Fine, I’ll send you a couple links. But you owe me, Andrews.”

He grins. It’s good to see him. It’s always good to see him.

Rebecca barges in, her breath heavy, and drops on her bed without even untying her shoelaces.

“I’m dead, Coop’! Coach is having us run laps before rowing. Laps! We don’t even use our legs that much!”

“Is that your roommate?” Archie asks, and she’s tempted to close her laptop right there and then.

“Oh, hey,” Rebecca says, eyeing the screen. “Who’s the hunk du jour?”   
“What did she say? I can’t hear,” Archie says as Betty throws one of her decorative pillows at her friend.

“Nothing, she was just  _ leaving _ ,” she says, glaring at her.

Rebecca wiggles her eyebrows suggestively, and Betty mouths something that sounds suspiciously like ‘witch’.

“You guys seem like you’re getting along,” he smiles.

“Yeah, she’s not so bad. A little loud,” Betty grins, and her decorative pillow finds its way back to her face.

_ Oh, this is war. _

“Okay, well, you look like you need to catch up, so… Call you later?”   
“Sure!”

The second she slams that laptop shut, Rebecca jumps her.

“Oh, we like this one for you, Cooper! He’s hot and sweet, like a Hallmark movie character. Please tell me you’re going to bake cupcakes together and kiss in a sled or something.”

Betty blushes. Blushes hard. 

“He’s just a friend,” she answers a little too quickly.

“Uh-huh,” Rebecca smirks. She turns to look at Betty’s string of pictures on the wall, and taps on one of them.

“So that’s the guy who writes you songs. I kept wondering!”

“Were you snooping around my stuff  _ again _ ?”   
“Calm down, I’m just trying to piece it together.’   
“A regular Sherlock Holmes, everyone,” Betty rolls her eyes. 

Her roommate whines.

“You know how bored I get when the Bachelor is out.”   
“All that energy, wasted on me when you could use it to save the world,” she smirks.   
“I’m pre-med, Betty. I can guarantee you those mannequins don’t need my help. You, however…”

“Archie’s my best friend,” she cuts her off.

“No one past the age of sixteen has a best friend.”    
“We grew up together!”

“And you’re telling me, that with you looking like this—she circles all of her with her finger—and him looking like  _ that,  _ that nothing ever happened? Ugh, what a waste,” she groans, jumping on her own bed.

“I never said nothing happened,” Betty counters, and she immediately regrets it. 

She keeps forgetting that Rebecca’s sole pleasure in life, besides waking up at 5am to yell at her teammates, is gossip. 

“Oh do tell, Cooper. Don’t hold up on me now.”

She bites her lip. 

“We kissed, a few times. You were right. The songs were his,” she confesses.

“What?  _ How long have you been sitting on that _ ?”

She winces.

“About six months.”   
“What about your high school boyfriend?! Betty!”

She hears the judgment in her voice, and she looks away.   
“Yeah, I messed up.”

Rebecca nods, a quiet whistle escaping her lips.

“Well, high school’s for messing up. You can always try to do better, next time.”

Betty looks at her. She tends to see the world as Riverdale taught her to. In black and white, with good guys, and bad people. Knights in shining armor, and gargoyles hiding in the shadows.   
Even within her, there’s a dark part, a part she blames for everything she does wrong.

She’s tried to kill it, to ignore it. But it always comes back, in the ugliest ways.

“I’m not sure I know how,” she admits.

Rebecca frowns.

“Betty, you’re not a bad person. You just made mistakes. All you need to do is try. No one expects you to be perfect from the get-go.”

Tears start welling up in her eyes.  _ He does, _ she wants to say. He always believes the best of her, even when she doesn’t deserve it. Even when the world is against her. 

“I just feel like the odds are stacked against me, between my overbearing, borderline Hitchcockianmother, and my dad…”

She swallows.

“I don’t think you need to beat yourself up for things outside of your control. You’re allowed to just be like, this sucks, and I’m having a hard time, and I’ll just do better next time, you know?”

Betty opens her mouth, no sound coming out of it.

“Where are you getting this stuff?”

Rebecca hands her a tissue.

“Teen Vogue has surprisingly good articles, these days.”

* * *

The doorbell rings, and he runs to get it. It’s probably for his mom anyway.

It’s funny, he thinks as he skips the last steps, that now that spring break has started, he’s almost itching to go back to school. He’s been working hard this year, and it’s starting to pay off. Sure, it’s community college, and most of his friends have left to do bigger, bolder things. 

But for the first time in his life, he knows who he is, and what he wants. And it doesn’t matter that his dreams are smaller than others. He feels good about them. Happy. 

He has everything he needs, right there in the palm of his hand. 

_ Almost _ everything.

He trips on the doorstep.

In front of him stands a tall, beautiful girl, her hands clasped together, blonde hair tucked behind her ear, and big, cat-like green eyes looking at him with hope.

“Betty?”

She smiles, and he almost wants to close the door on her. 

He’s not ready.

“Walk me to Pop’s?” She asks, and he stands there, gobsmacked.

It’s her. It’s  _ her _ , and it isn’t, because her hair is shorter, right above her shoulders, and there’s just something about her, in the way she tilts her head, that breaks his heart in an entirely new way. 

She’s here, she’s really here, and she doesn’t smell like her anymore.

“What are you doing back here?” he says, his lips stretching into the biggest grin he’s ever had.   
“It’s spring break. I missed home,” she shrugs.

It’s been, what- almost a year? And yeah, he’s seen her on video calls, heard her voice on the phone enough times now to know what expression her face most likely makes when she talks.

Holding her in his arms is so much better.

* * *

She tries not to stare, but it’s hard not to. He looks... different.

It’s in the way his hair falls on his forehead in a loose curl, in the lip he bites when she says something funny.    
He’s a little less proper than he’d been in school. More rugged. His hair is a little darker, an almost auburn shade now, and there’s a five o’clock shadow ghosting along the sides of his jaw.

He still has the same scar on his eyebrow, the same freckles adorning his face.

It’s still Archie, and he welcomes her with the same old boyish grin.

But every once in a while, when she lets her eyes wander, he smiles in an entirely new way. 

_ Handsome _ , she thinks. He’s handsome, now. Not football player hot, or boy scout pretty. 

People say they get butterflies in their stomachs. In her case, it’s more like a swarm of bees. 

“So, how’s community college?” She asks, and he grins.    
“Come on, school? Really?”   
“What! I worry!”   
“My grades are fine, Bets. Turns out it’s a lot easier to focus when half the town isn’t trying to kill you,” he grins. “I even have time for—“

He stops himself and Betty wonders if he’s still trying not to mention a possible girlfriend in front of her. She knows Veronica is dating that guy in her poli-sci class, so it can’t be her. 

“—your beautiful girlfriend?”

She means it as a joke, really. She’s lost her chance with him a long time ago, anyway. He furrows his brows, rubbing his thumb over his lip.

“Uhm...”

She blinks. 

“What?”   
“I haven’t really had time to date.”

She stares at him. So this whole time. This whole year. He’d been single?

“Oh. Why?”

She doesn’t know where it’s coming from, the accusatory tone, and from the looks of him, he doesn’t either.

“I’ve been busy with school, the gym, stuff...” he eludes.   
“I mean, it’s okay if you don’t want to tell me, it doesn’t really matter,” she forces herself to say.   
“Seems like it does, though.”

He grabs her hand, the one that’s been lying on the table. The one her nails are currently digging in. Carefully, he turns it over, unfolding her fingers one by one.

“I’m not…waiting for you, if that’s what you’re worried about,” he says, eyes trained on the crescent marks she’s left on her palm. “I just felt like I needed some time by myself. To figure out what I want.”

He’s not looking at her anymore. 

He’s also not letting go of her hand.

The marks remain, still. Angry and red, a reminder that while he’s changed, she hasn’t. He brushes a thumb over them, something he’s done a thousand times.  _ Muscle memory. _

“No, I know. I know,” she repeats, trying to keep her smile from fading.

_ He’s not waiting for her. _

“Have you heard back from Jughead?”

Her face grows cold.

“I don’t… really wanna talk about him.”   
“Oh, okay,” he says, pulling his hand away.

_ Come back. _

She forces herself to smile.

“I’d rather talk about you! From what I hear around town, you have a secret project? That, or you’re building a murder shed, according to FP.”

He laughs, the tip of his ears burning red.    
She wants to pinch them. _ Oh, this is so much harder in person. _

“Yeah, it’s uh. It’s something I’ve been working on since last summer, with a couple of the guys here. They help when they can.”

“Can I get the scoop on this?” She grins.

He shuffles around. He’s nervous, she realizes. This must be important to him. 

“I’ll show you, if you want. What are you doing tomorrow?”

She raises a quizzical eyebrow.

“Following you to a secondary location, by the looks of it.”

When he smiles, secret, and soft, she tries to ignore the swarm crawling in the pit of her stomach.

* * *

“Oh, Arch,” Betty says, and he forgets to breathe. “This is...”

The camp itself is far from being finished. Half the cabins stand on their bare bones, waiting for the new logs to come in. He’s still cleaning the clearing, finding a surprising amount of gardening furniture, left alone by Susie, no doubt.

He’d driven there early, hoping to catch the first rays of sunlight, and the air around them is cold and misty. She doesn’t seem to mind, her eyes growing tenfold as she walks around, smiling from ear to ear.

He could watch her for hours.

She turns to him, eyes filled with glee.

“Did you check the mailbox? Does it still exist?”

He blinks. He’d completely forgotten about it. Laughter, memories from the past start ringing in his ears. 

“Let’s have a look,” he says, nervously wiping his hands on his jeans.

She walks him to the edge of the clearing, to a spot in between the boys and girls’ cabins. Sure enough, their tree is still there, hidden amongst others.

To anyone else, it wouldn’t look like anything. It’s a dead tree, struck by lightning, or time, years before they even set foot in that camp. To them, it’s another shrine dedicated to the bond that links them. Betty crouches, sticking her hand in the crack of the trunk.

Her eyes light up.

“It’s still here!”

She takes out an old cigar box, using her cardigan sleeve to dust it off. He kneels next to her.

“Should we open it?” he asks, a little anxious, a little happy.   
“Together ?”

They take the lid off, and sure enough, there are a few postcards in there. Some pictures. And, lodged in between a Barbie head and a poor looking Playmobil, a ruby red, heart-shaped ring.

His heart skips a beat.

“Oh my gosh, I forgot I put it in there,” she smiles softly. “ I searched for it for months!”

She looks at him, a slight blush on her cheeks, her face otherwise unreadable. 

“Do you think it still fits?”   
“Only one way to find out.”

Gently, carefully, he takes the ring from her palm, widening the band enough for her to wear it. 

His fingers are shaking. She stares at him, and he swears there’s  _ something _ . A silent understanding, not unlike that night in his garage, that allows them to simply exist in a moment outside of time and space. Outside reality.

In this moment, he’s only the boy next door, and her, the girl he’s going to marry.

When he slides the ring down her finger, he hears her breath hitch.

She looks at him, her smile a quiet line he’s hanging from. 

“Hey, Arch,” she starts.   
“Yeah?” he answers.   
“Do you—” 

“Listen up, sickos, I don’t have a gun, but I can tell you this! If you’re trespassing, I’m ready to brawl!” Susie yells at them.

He closes his eyes. When he opens them, the moment is gone. 

“It’s Archie, Suze.”

The woman stops dead in her tracks.

“Red?! It’s asscrack o’clock, what are you doing here? Go home!”

Betty looks at him, a curious smile on her lips, and when Susie walks down —well, saunters like a fifties bookmaker- he raises his hands.

“I was just showing Betty what I was working on,” he says.

She steps closer, squinting at Betty with a menacing look, and, out of habit, he places himself between her and Susie. Behind her, Morey waddles, his tall frame enveloped in a fluffy cotton robe.

She squints at them, recognition washing over her face as her frown turns into a smug grin.

“Little Miss Cooper, would you look at that! Your hair is shorter than on the picture he showed me.” She turns back to him. “Hey, hotshot, I told you not to bring girls on the premises. Look at her, poor thing! Freaking Sleeping Beauty and you’re bringing her to the Swamp—”

“I think you’re mixing up your metaphors, Susie,” Morey tries, and she glares at him.

He gulps, and retreats a few steps.

She nods, and Betty looks at him, half terrified, half trying to keep herself from laughing. The tip of her nose is slightly pink, but that might be from the morning cold. Her eyes narrow.

“Wait…Miss Susie? Is that you? Wow, you didn’t change at all!”   
“Don’t act like time has been kind to me, you little twerp. It’s good to see you too,” she nods, already taking a step back. “Red, can you stop by the cabin before you leave? We have some paperwork to go over.”

There’s no paperwork to go over, that he’s sure of. This sounds more like a lecture waiting to happen. He groans.

“Sure.”

She gives him one last nasty look before walking back, Morey in tow. 

He turns back. Betty’s still looking around in awe, and he drinks her all in: the blonde hair, bare face, big green eyes boring into the soul of this place. He knows she can see it, the potential, the memories being rebuilt.

Susie’s right. In the early morning light, with her white dress, she looks like a princess.

“So? What do you think?”

She places a hand on his forearm.

“You’re something else, Archie Andrews.”

She’s still wearing the ring.

_ Right back at you. _

* * *

So there are a couple loose ends that she needs to fix before going back to New Haven, and she extends her stay in Riverdale by a week.

So what?

And if she ends up grabbing breakfast with Archie every day before he heads out to camp, it’s a nice bonus. Hanging out with her best friend, the way they used to. Just the two of them.

Their hands accidentally grazing when they pass the maple syrup bottle.

Her heart beating out of her chest when she looks up from her plate and catches him staring.

They’re friends. 

He’s not dating anyone. But it’s not like it matters. 

She shakes her head. It’s this stupid bedroom, she scoffs. It’s way too big, way too pink, and way too close to his house.

Archie walks by his window, and she  _ whines _ .   
It’s looking like shirts remain an optional choice in the Andrews dress code.

It’s nothing, she tells herself. She just hasn’t been on a date in a while, and she’s growing a little restless.

She looks at her nightstand, and at the red ring on it. 

Brown eyes bear into her soul, making her skin feel prickly, exposed. Hands graze upon hers, sliding the ring on her finger.

It would be so easy to make the moment more than it had been. To fantasize about the real thing, to dream about his hands on her waist as they’re swaying on the dancefloor. 

But she’s not sixteen anymore, and she  _ likes _ where they are right now. 

She’s spent the last four years running around, running for her life, and she’s only just found her way back to him. She isn’t about to ruin it because memories are stirring up old feelings.

She presses the back of her hands against her eyes.

She wants more. She always wants more, and that’s the problem.   
Had she been satisfied with the way they were, half of the things that had happened to them wouldn’t haunt her at night.

She turns to the window. He’s looking at her, and he does a little wave.

She smiles. Her phone vibrates.

_ Dinner? _

Betty nods, and he grins, biting the side of his lip. Her stomach does a funny little flip. 

Nothing to see here.

* * *

They end up getting pizza, eating on his lawn, sitting on the plastic chairs his dad bought before their first beach trip.

“So, what are your plans for the summer?” she asks, biting into her slice.

He looks up. Above them, the sky is full of stars. He hasn’t felt that hopeful in a long time.

“I’m probably going to start working at the camp again.”   
“I bet you’re really popular,” she grins.

He scratches his jaw. 

“Yeah, I guess the kids like me.”   
“Are you blushing?  _ Oh my god, _ Archie. How many?”   
“How many what?”   
“How many kids are in love with you?” she sing-songs, and he pushes the leg of her chair with his foot.

“Stop it! It’s not funny! I had to hide in the changing room on the last day!” 

She lolls her head back, a huge laugh coming out of her, and he starts laughing too.

“So… many… love letters…” he says, and Betty looks at him with a smug smile on her face.

“What do you expect, when you come in looking like this!” she points to him. He raises an eyebrow.

“Like what?”

She suddenly finds the pizza box fascinating, which is interesting to him.

“Oh, come on! You know what you look like.”

He sits up straight. She’s never really mentioned his appearance before. A lot of people have, and he’s not stupid. He knows he doesn’t look too bad, if the looks he’s been getting for the last couple of years are anything to go by. 

“Oh, go on. Don’t let me stop you,” he grins.

He thinks he can see her blush. It’s hard, with the sky being that dark and the lawn lights refusing to switch on. He really needs to fix them, he thinks, rubbing the bridge of his nose.

“Well, you’ve always been…” she pauses, looking everywhere but at him. She’s not saying anything, but his heart is dancing in his chest. “You are,” she starts again, and seeing her struggle makes him yearn to take her hand and just kiss her, right there and then. “I mean Veronica told you so many times! You  _ know  _ !”

She’s wringing her hands together, and he puts a stop to her misery.

“I know, yeah.” 

He stops, carefully considering his next steps. But she’s there, sitting close to him, and crickets are chirping, and she smells like  _ her _ again —like him, and he wants more. 

They’ve been toying with the line. 

He wants to obliterate it.

“For what it’s worth, I think you’re beautiful, too. Always have.”

* * *

It’s just like high school. Except it’s not.

They’re sitting at her kitchen table, his books open in front of him as he scratches the stubble on his face absentmindedly. She’s almost done with her own break, and he’s asked her for help to get a head start. 

She presses her lips together. 

_ I think you’re beautiful, too _ .

“I don’t get it,” he groans after five minutes of staring at his notes.

“You just— let me see,” she says, grabbing the notebook away from him. 

His writing is just as bad as she remembers, but she’s had years to learn how to decipher it. 

She flips through the pages. 

“Okay, see? Here. If you start from there, it will make a lot more sense,” she taps on the paragraph with her finger. 

He licks his lips.

_ I think you’re beautiful, too _ .  _ Always have. _

She forgets to breathe.

“Yeah, you’re right.”

He sits back, pushing a hand through his hair. She averts her eyes. 

“How am I going to do this once you’re gone. These finals are going to kill me,” he moans.    
“Elizabeth,” a voice starts, coming from the living room. 

She rolls her eyes.

“Yes,  _ Mother _ ?”   
“Would you mind grabbing me a glass of water, please?”

She gets up, sharing an annoyed look with Archie before stepping out of the kitchen into the living room, where her mom is waiting for her, a glass of water in her hand.

Ah. At least they’re cutting down to the chase early today.

“What’s up?” She tilts her head.   
“So  _ this _ —she points to the kitchen— is why you’ve stayed longer?”

She frowns.

“No, mom, clearly I’m here for the family love.”   
“Don’t be snarky with me, Betty, you know what I mean,” she lowers her voice. “ _ Archie _ ? Again? I thought we were out of that rabbit hole. Aren’t there other, better-suited guys for you at school? Ones that don’t sit in my kitchen and eat my entire stash of girl scout cookies?”

Betty tilts her head. She could tell her mom the truth, that they’re just friends, and that she’s going to take the train back to Yale in a few days. 

But the disdain in her voice grates her. She’s never quite hidden the fact that she thinks Archie’s not good enough for her, despite him proving her wrong, time and time again. 

“Hey, mom? I’m nineteen. If I want to date Archie, it’s my problem, and the only person who’s going to have a say in it is the one sitting in there,  _ barely touching _ the thin mints.”

Her mother blinks, her mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water.

She hopes her furious whispers haven't carried out to the kitchen, but when Betty sits back down, he’s still focused on his textbook. 

“She still drives me crazy,” she sighs, slouching on the table.    
“What did she want?” He asks, crossing out part of the text with a sharpie.   
“She wants to know when I’m going back to school. I think I’ve overstayed my welcome,” she bites her cheek.   
“Oh,” his eyes meet hers. “I didn’t realize your break was over.”

She sighs, stretching over the table.

“Yeah… I was thinking of taking the train on Friday. I would have liked to stay until the weekend, but then she would insist on driving me instead, and I can’t spend two hours with my mother in a car. Not if we want either of us to come out of it alive.”

“Do you want me to drive you?” He asks, pencil in his mouth and a highlighter in his hand. Like it’s nothing.

Her eyes widen.

“What?”   
“I could drive you back to Yale. It’s not like I have any plans,” he shrugs. “You could show me around campus.”

Her heart does another one of those funny little side steps. 

“You would do that? For me?”

He stares at her, then, and tilts his head. 

“Come on. Do you even have to ask?”

* * *

He drives her back, like he said he would. It’s a long trip, during which she has nothing else to do than stare. At the elegant profile, the dark brows. The stubble adorning his face, the content smile he arbors when a song he likes plays on the radio. 

One of his hands is one the wheel, his elbow resting against the open window. The other one navigates between the shift gear and his lap.

He asks her to grab the thermos of coffee he packed before driving off, and as she passes him the cup and he drinks it without his eyes leaving the road, she realizes _ this _ Archie is used to being alone. 

It stirs up something in her, again, and she’s tired of pushing it down.

She likes him. She  _ still _ likes him.

And the confined space of the truck is not helping her at all. 

He lends her the cup, and she drinks from it, ignoring the heat pooling in her stomach as his hand grazes hers.

He turns his head towards her, his smile easy and bright, and he places a hand on her thigh, lightly squeezing it.

_ Oh, help, _ she thinks. Help, help, help.

* * *

They walk around campus until night falls, quietly enjoying the moment.

She shows him her favorite dining hall. Her favorite spot to read, her favorite coffee shop. She’s afraid it’s a bit much, the tall, ivy-covered stone walls, the air of wealth around them, and that he’ll think less of her because of them.

He grabs her hand, and holds onto it for the rest of the visit.

She feels his eyes on her, drinking her in, and she pretends she doesn’t notice. It’s thrilling, realizing that just as she used to orbit around him, he seems to be doing the same with her. 

But she’s been burned before. 

She hugs him when they get to her dorm. He still smells like  _ home _ .

“Thanks for doing this, Arch,” she breathes.   
“I’m always here to help, you should really know that by now.”   
“You’re right, I should.”

She doesn’t want to leave him like that, having driven hours with only mediocre pizza and lukewarm coffee as a reward. She doesn’t want to leave him at all. 

“Don’t be a stranger, okay?” he says, and she smiles.   
“Promise.”

He stands there, his hands in his jacket pockets, his eyes boring into hers.

It should make her self conscious. It should make her want to look away, but she doesn’t. She just…looks back. Curious, and open.

He takes a step forward.

He raises his finger up, and starts following the contour of her jaw, pushing a lost strand of hair behind her ear before letting it drop slowly.

Her breath hitches. She’s pretty sure his does, too.

“See you in the summer, Betty Cooper,” he grins, a crooked, wicked smile that makes her shiver.

It’s a smile that doubles as a promise, and she returns it tenfold.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you want to chat or get little snippets, I'm also on [twitter](http://www.twitter.com/q_constellation)! The next update could take a little longer, but I'm still going to try to deliver as fast as I can :). Kudos & Comments are always appreciated!


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